Seven Sydney Opera House designs that never saw the light of day

This brutalist design was the runner-up of the competition. Inspired by a nautilus shell, it consists of an ascending spiral form with full height windows, topped with a roof made from folded concrete covered in copper. The group behind the design, described as a "pick-up band", was formed by seven men, mostly Americans in the architecture trade, and a visiting critic from France. The design group Geddes Brecher Qualls Cunningham (GBQC) was a result of the group working on the Sydney Opera House; the firm would later earn the profession’s highest honor.

This boxy concept from the Dutch-British husband-and-wife architectural duo looks rather conservative next to the pearly seashells from Ultzon and the Philidelphia Collaborative, which might be what bumped it down to third placed. However, the judges were impressed with the human scale of the two buildings, which are separated by a courtyard, and the promenade. The design, with its emphasis on walking, is reminiscent of the tilted ground-to-roof walkway of the Oslo Opera House in Norway, which was built fifty years after Boissevain and Osmond’s unrealised vision.

Okay so, this art deco design was never entered into the competition – but the bloke who dreamed it up would have had some considerable sway to get it across the line. It's the work of English composer Sir Eugene Goossens. A key advocate for a new opera house, Goossens moved to Sydney in 1947 to take up the position of conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He was also the director of the NSW State Conservatorium of Music. After two decades of conducting orchestras in big, fancy, purpose-built buildings, he arrived to find our local orchestra performing in the comparatively inadequate 1889 Sydney Town Hall. So he knocked up this design, with an outdoor music bowl out the front.

This bold design cracked fourth place in the competition and was the highest ranked Australian entry. The judges commented on the project’s "very skilful planning". Both Kollar and Korab were also refugees, having independently fled from the communist regime in Hungary. Kollar was an architect and professor who lectured at the University of New South Wales until his death in 2000. Korab was prominent in architectural photography and was based in Detroit for most of his career. His work is said to have captured the moodiness and romanticism of even the most austere buildings. Kollar was actually a big fan of Utzon’s vision, and later became chairman of the ‘Utzon in Charge’ Committee. During the '60s the committee campaigned on Utzon’s behalf in his disputes with the New South Wales government (see page 6 of this UNSW magazine for more on the story).

This submission was not too dissimilar from Boissevain and Osmond’s box-shape-with-promenade idea. But this English duo tucked their promenade under the raised building and put a helicopter pad up on the roof, presumably in case the conductor needed to get somewhere in a hurry. Both Dow and Milburn apprenticed at W & T R Milburn, Stanley's father and uncle's architectural firm in Sunderland. The firm split in 1947 and it is thought that this was because Stanley wished to seek larger commissions through entering competitions. He was unsuccessful in winning other competitions, but he eventually won the Welsh Medical School at Cardiff. The job was incomplete at his death in 1961.

This English company's sprawling opera house was made up of two individual auditoriums, separated by a foyer-restaurant area, with a sunken plaza by the waterside and a vivid red facade. But the judges didn't favour the two-hall design, and so we'll just have to imagine how breathless we'd get on that strange spiralling stairwell off to one side.

While the sunken courtyards echo the Vine team's design, there's a certain Vegas-esque pizzazz to this American group’s entry. This design features a heck of a lot of concrete and glass, which seems to be a bit of a signature for the firm, which became known for many types of architecture across the United States, both public and private, with a focus on educational structures. The pair also designed what could well be New York's answer to Sydney's Sirius Building – Chatham Towers, a Brutalist beacon built in Lower Manhattan in 1965 as design-forward housing for middle-class residents.