The roof structure consists of over 2 400 precast arch units placed on cast in situ concrete pedestals.
Sydney opera house tile roof structure.
Seven a380s could sit wing to wing on the site.
Sydney opera house was added to unesco s world heritage list in 2007 there are more than 1 million roof tiles covering approximately 1 62 hectares sitting over the structure.
Though they are meant to be self cleaning in nature they still require maintenance replacement.
The roof of the sydney opera house has a whopping 1 056 000 glazed white granite tiles that have been imported from sweden.
For such an enormous construction the tiles are not particularly large around 120 mm square.
They re laid out not as squares but rather as diamond shapes and although from a distance the opera house appears to be white there are actually two tile colours and textures on display glossy white and matt cream.
Sydney opera house model.
The impressive and subtle chevron pattern has glossy white matte cream coloured tiles manufactured by höganäs ab.
The adjoining arch segments were constructed on a steel centering and stressed together to form a stable structure.
They were made in sweden.
This is an extract from the publication icons which can be purchased online.
As construction of the podium began in sydney jørn utzon and his team of architects back in hallebaek explored how to build the opera house s shell shaped roof.
Between 1958 and 1962 the roof design for the sydney opera house evolved through various iterations as utzon and his team pursued parabolic ellipsoid and finally spherical geometry to derive the final form of the shells.