Jørn UtzonPlatforms, Architecture and the Use of the Ground

In 1962, Jørn Utzon, the architect of the Sydney Opera House, published a short yet seminal essay titled “Platforms and Plateaus.” The text is an account of his fascination with the architecture of the platform, of which Utzon mentions a few examples, including the giant platforms in the Yucatán, the plinth upon which Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid sits, the floor of a traditional Chinese or Japanese house, and the mysterious architecture of Monte Albán in Mexico. By highlighting the platform, Utzon put forward an idea of an architecture that defines space without enclosing it. Yet it is precisely the subtleness of the platform as a space that manipulates the most essential datum of existence—the ground—that makes this type of architecture an ambivalent form that both enables and restricts what happens upon it.