Primitive hut or platform: Utzon, the platform, and ideas of architectural beginnings

Historian William J. R. Curtis remarked in 2008 that Semper’s idea of the ‘primitive hut’ might well be succeeded as a founding myth of architecture by Jørn Utzon’s idea of the platform – the natural plateau, the built terrace, the levelled urban space. The built platform, a landscape construct found across eras and civilizations, is discussed by Utzon in his 1965 ‘Platforms and Plateaus’ article. The platform may be seen as a true ‘idea’, positioned between architecture and landscape, locating human existence between earth and sky. The platform may be a fundamental idea through which, as Curtis suggests, to consider myths of architectural beginnings. Utzon’s built synthesis of landscape and architecture would seem to offer a ‘platform’, a basis, for thinking about architectural history and theory. This paper reflects on Curtis’ suggestion, and also considers Utzon’s ideas as formative for a conception of architecture related to technical and poetic ideals and everyday experience. It considers aspects of Utzon’s platform idea, set against the idea of the ‘primitive hut’, to consider this landscape element as formative for a contemporary ‘architectural imagination’.