Engineer turned fantastical sketches for Sydney Opera House to workable reality
Jack Zunz, who has died aged 94, had just returned to Britain after several years in South Africa when the brief for the Sydney Opera House landed on his desk at the Ove Arup civil engineering firm. ‘‘From the moment I was asked to take the thing over, life changed,’’ he said in a video interview with the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2016. ‘‘It changed because I started travelling all over the world frequently. And it changed professionally in that it created challenges which many engineers never have to face.’’
Jorn Utzon, a Danish architect, had won an international competition in 1957 to design the opera house, but his entry had been selected on the basis of a few sketches without full consideration of the engineering involved. His vision, which resembled the billowing sails of a ship, would require a highly complex arrangement of unique shell shapes. For several years various approaches to the structure were tested and abandoned, and at times it seemed that no formula or method existed to bring the building to life.
Zunz and his team eventually found a solution that involved constructing the shells from a fan-like series of precast concrete arch ribs, each made of multiple subsections. To make construction feasible, every arch would be formed from the surface of a single sphere. ‘‘The challenge was to design a structural form which was extraordinary, with very rudimentary tools by current standards,’’ he said. ‘‘Yes, there were Iron-Age computers compared with what is available today . . . One was really working at the frontiers of what was possible in our industry.’’
They were also working under intense public scrutiny, with concerns in Australia over the rising costs and delays. The criticism and hostility were such that Utzon, never a great team player, resigned in 1966. For Zunz, the eventual completion of the opera house in 1973 was a matter of huge relief. Later he commented that life thereafter became a little duller, before quickly adding that ‘‘dullness can be a beautiful thing’’.
Gerhard Jacob Zunz was born in Moenchengladbach, Germany. He was still an infant when the family moved to Cape Town, South Africa. When war broke out, he wanted to join the army but, as he was under 18, he needed parental permission – which his father gave on condition that he first started a degree. After a year at the University of the Witwatersrand, he signed up as a gunner, seeing active service in Egypt and Italy, where, despite being Jewish, he received a blessing from Pope Pius XII.
Back in South Africa in 1946, Zunz returned to his degree. Afer graduating, he soon decided to try his hand in London, and asked a friend to supply details of engineering consultancies. He wrote to the first name on the list, Arup, and was invited to meet Ove Arup, its founder, whom he described as an outsider with ‘‘strong artistic leanings’’. Their first interview, in August 1950, lasted well over an hour and touched on virtually every subject, ‘‘with the notable exception of anything relating to engineering’’.
Although Arup told him there was no job available, a letter arrived the next morning – an urgent project had come up, which would be Zunz’s first job for the practice. He later described Arup as ‘‘my boss, my mentor, and my friend’’, adding that it was from Arup that he learnt the ‘‘overarching lesson’’ in life, ‘‘that the only thing which matters in life are people – people, people, people’’.
During this time, Zunz and his wife Babs enjoyed much of the culture London had to offer. His mother’s deteriorating health meant a return to South Africa, now with a toddler in tow. He recalled that TS Eliot was on their ship and, on one occasion, young Marion aroused the writer’s displeasure by pushing one of her wheeled toys into his deckchair. The couple decided to return to Britain after the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960.
After the Sydney Opera House he worked on a number of other high-profile projects, including Britannic House in London for BP, the distinctive Emley Moor mast in West Yorkshire, and with Norman Foster on HSBC’s headquarters building in Hong Kong and the first terminal building for London Stansted airport. Foster described him as ‘‘a rare individual who so expertly combined the essence of engineering and design as a seamless whole’’.
Outside work Zunz’s three great interests were Chelsea Football Club, where he was a season ticket holder for more than 40 years; a regular round at Coombe Hill golf club in west London; and Wimbledon Synagogue, where he worshipped on high holidays.
Zunz remained a defender of excellence in civil engineering, arguing that it was a far more artistic occupation than people usually gave it credit for. He believed the Sydney Opera House was a great building because ‘‘those parts of our built environment which lift the spirit are rare’’.
He is survived by his wife and two of their three children. Marion died in a skiing accident in 1992. –