Utzon Pendant

Danish architect Jørn Utzon was born in 1918. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1942, he, like many architects affected by World War II, fled to neutral Sweden where he was employed in the Stockholm office of Hakon Ahlberg for the duration of the war. He then went to Finland to work with Alvar Aalto.

Most of Utzon’s projects have been completed in his native Denmark, but he is best known for the Sydney Opera House, an iconic building of curving roof forms. Construction began in 1959 and was not complete until 1973.

Utzon's next major design, after returning to Denmark from Sydney, was the Bagsvaerd Church in Copenhagen. Utzon planned the interior vaults after being inspired by banks of clouds.

Jørn Utzon’s fascination with architectural legends from the Mayan, Moroccan and Asian cultures led to what he termed “Additive Architecture”.

The Utzon lamp JU1 was designed over a decade before Utzon worked on the Opera House and was inspired by his father’s naval engineering drawings of ships.