'A symbol of an entire country'
 |  Sydney Opera House's iconic roof shells were cut out from a concrete sphere. |
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SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- As an icon of a city, it is as instantly recognizable as the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty or the Golden Gate Bridge.
It is almost 50 years since Danish architect Joern Utzon was chosen to build the Sydney Opera House at Bennelong Point on the Australian city's harbor front.
The mammoth project, commissioned in 1957, took 14 years to complete, with Utzon resigning midway through amid acrimonious arguments with government officials.
He was even absent when Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the building in 1973 and has never returned to Australia to see his finished work.
But the realization of Utzon's spectacular vision of a cluster of sweeping Gothic concrete shells arching sail-like over the water was nonetheless hailed as an architectural masterpiece.
"It's actually become a symbol of the entire country and that's very rare in any sort of civic building," Sydney Opera House CEO Norman Gillespie told CNN.
"It's a rare thing where a building can change the image of a country. And the people of Australia have adopted this and have a great pride in it."
Nowadays, the Opera House effortlessly holds court over Sydney's harbor, commanding attention and admiration from those who scrutinize the curved vaults of its roof and the sheer scale of its vast cathedral-like interior.
Yet Utzon's initial drawings were described by competition judges as "simple to the point of being diagrammatic."
Only their conviction that his design had the potential to become one of the greatest buildings in the world ensured it prevailed over more detailed proposals.
"If you look at the original drawings you can see how sketchy some of them were," said Gillespie.
"So it was an absolute miracle and Utzon was really so overwhelmed that a foreign country took him on to build something that was so bizarre in many ways."
Even after work had begun on the Opera House's foundations and podium level in 1959, Utzon and his engineers were still working to solve the problems involved in constructing the self-supporting roof shells that were intended as his building's signature.
Since none of the shapes fitted a consistent pattern, their prefabrication threatened to be costly and time-consuming.
But in 1961 Utzon made a radical breakthrough, realizing that he could cut each shape out of the same concrete sphere, providing he adjusted the roof design so that the different roof components shared the same meridian curve.
By the mid-60s, Utzon had overcome all architectural obstacles. But after clashing with the New South Wales state government over changes to the design and rising costs, he resigned in 1966. As a result, the interior of the building was not built in keeping with Utzon's original intentions.
But now Opera House officials are putting that right. In 2001 the NSW Government provided A$69.3 million ($54.3 million) for several projects to improve the interior of the building, the first structural alterations since its completion.
Utzon, assisted by his son Jan and Australian architect Richard Johnson, agreed to act as Director-in-Charge, Master Architect and Concept Designer for the projects from his Copenhagen home.
Externally, work is underway to open up the western side of the Opera House, so that the harbor is visible. Internally, the former reception room has been re-designed at a cost of more than $3.5 million and renamed the Utzon Room.
At 86, Utzon is finally getting proper recognition for his work. In 2003 he was awarded the Pritzker Prize, regarded as the Nobel Prize of architecture. Yet, now unable to travel, he will never visit his finished work.
"He never has (seen it) but if you talk to Joern he doesn't need to," said Gillespie. "It's absolutely every inch in his head and his wife tells me that there is not a day that has passed since when he doesn't think about the Opera House.
"It's almost the first word when he wakes up and his last thought before he goes to bed, continuing to develop all his ideas for the Opera House."
-- CNN's Andrea Armsden contributed to this report.
