Jørn Utzon and Transcultural Essentialism

Adrian Carter, Architect MAA (DK), is Professor of Architecture at Bond University, Queensland, Australia, previously at the Aarhus School of Architecture and later Aalborg University, Denmark. Born in Southampton, the UK, he gained his Master of Architecture at Portsmouth School of Architecture, with further studies in Urban Design with Jan Gehl, at The Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen and Phenomenology in Architecture with Dalibor Vessily, at the University of Cambridge. He has worked with Reima Pietilä, Niels Torp, Henning Larsen, Ken Woolley and Dissing+Weitling. A recognised expert on the work of Jørn Utzon, he was the inaugural Director of the Utzon Research Center and responsible for the realisation of the Utzon Center building on the Aalborg harbourfront, designed by Jørn Utzon.

Marja Sarvimäki, Architect SAFA, is an Associate Professor at the Bond University in Australia. Previously she taught architectural history-theory and design studios at the University of Hawaii, USA. She is born in Helsinki, Finland, and earned her MArch and PhD at the Helsinki University of Technology (current Aalto University). She also has pursued studies on Japanese architecture at the Tokyo National University of Arts and conducted her post-doctoral research on Korean architecture at the Korea University. In addition to her doctoral dissertation, which comprised extensive fieldwork in East Asia, her work includes numerous later publications on East Asian cultures as well as architectural research methodology. Sarvimaki’s current research focuses on modernism in the Asia-Pacific region.