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Letter to the Master, Remembering Sydney

Françoise Fromonot 
30/06/2018


Dear Jørn: A hundred years, it’s daunting. How to ‘wish you a happy birthday’? These words are pronounced many times in the course of a lifetime. If this greeting works, it’s because it expresses celebration and good wishes at the same time, because it naturally links sentiments of the past to an awareness of the future, in the present; almost a definition of history itself. This celebration of your centenary will make you smile, perhaps. As you well know, some architects, more than others, have the capacity to live on, thanks to the places they have left behind. Ten years ago, when they learned of your passing, my Sydney friends immediately headed for the Opera House. They were going up the stairs leading to the white shells when they realized that other friends had come for the same purpose: “to spend an hour contemplating these miraculous forms,” as they wrote to me. Of the city residents, visitors, and tourists milling around on the platform on the edge of the sea that last day of November, how many were there with the same thing in mind?... [+]


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