The development of Utzon’s designs – perhaps of most good designs? – seems to have been characterised by moments of insight punctuating protracted periods of hard work to explore their implications. Nowhere was this truer than in Sydney. The vital spark for the project had, of course, come almost a decade before the design competition during Utzon’s 1949 visit to Mexico to see the Mayan temples. The conceptual leap that imagined the temple platforms as hollow, housing a building’s non-public spaces, offered a perfect parti for organising the complex programme of the Opera House... [+]