[ conversation in Spanish ]
[Rafael Moneo:] He admitted me in September of 1961
and I remember that I went there - to Hellebæk.
I lived in a small pension just [above Utzon],
called 'Solbakken',
and I went and I worked there then.
In those days, Utzon's office was just
a small house in the village - the village was almost nothing.
His own house was a bit 'retired' - just say - in the forest,
but the office was not so far away as this one
and in the back it was something like a lake and then...
There were six or seven people working for him
and he decided to meet me, and then
I found myself - let's say -
the happiest man in the world - just...
Jørn Utzon was just secure of himself without...
even in those moments.
When when I arrived there, it was in a rather difficult situation,
with the work of the Sydney Opera House because,
they hadn't started to build the platform and they didn't know yet
how they would resolve the issue of how to build the shells.
And, in spite of that, he always...
kept calm, and he had this condition of almost an heroic figure.
He was good-looking, strong.
Beside that, we value the fact that
the work he was doing was one of the most respected
commissions in the world at that...
We were aware that the Sydney Opera House was going to be
just the highlight of the architectural - the recent architectural...
It can be said that it's one of those cases
where - let's say - the character of the work
has something to do with his personality as well.
I think that it can be established
as a certain continuity between the work and himself.
In a way, he wanted to be very independent, no?
He didn't want to be just related - let's say -
with the - let's say -
sharing the other colleagues' interests.
He always wanted to be - let's say -
to keep this heroic condition that I was talking about.
And, therefore,
He was a bit away of - let's say - intellectual trains of...
he couldn't, he wasn't related so much.
The same with academic intelligentsia - even more, I think that
he didn't want to be just caught by...
and trapped by what could be said just
to be modernist for the pleasure of being modernist.
In this independence, he was able to make halls of vernacular architecture
as it happened in the kind of houses that were in those days almost finished.
And, he was able to afford monumentality,
just creating new images with this courage and value
that had the Sydney Opera House.
And, he has had the fortune of just making
a couple of dozens of work and no more that.
But, all of them with the interest
and almost each project can be said that has a substance
that doesn't make just an architect which produces under a trademark
but an architect that in each project is able to give it something different
and something of tremendous interest.