Sydney Opera House BUILD Tertiary Built Environment Creative Lab

Upon application by universities

Schools

A unique Creative Learning program for tertiary students, exploring the built environment through diverse and socially engaged design perspectives. Students tackle a future-facing design challenge by collaborating in interdisciplinary teams.

Dates and times

Program information

Explore emerging professional skills with a design challenge

BUILD’s tertiary program supports students to explore their role as future socially engaged global leaders, in the context of a real-life design challenge. Using Sydney Opera House as a learning canvas, students work in interdisciplinary teams to explore the architecture, engineering and design of the building.

Students consider the human-centred, social and historical forces that contributed to the Opera House’s story while incorporating their own values, ethics and professional aspirations. Students also deepen their knowledge of First Nations perspectives and inclusive access to a built environment site.

Responding to a future-facing design challenge, students will complete the program with a deeper understanding of what a socially engaged and interdisciplinary built environment practice may look like.

Sixty tertiary students (from one different university each year) participate in a 10-day creative intensive at Sydney Opera House.

Presented by Sydney Opera House

Humanitarianism implies a social conscience, a wish to do socially useful work, and to join hands with others fighting for the same values.

Sir Ove Arup

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Frequently asked questions

Program partner

Ove Arup Foundation

“An independent UK charity, the Ove Arup Foundation honours the memory of engineer, designer and philosopher, Sir Ove Arup. By funding educational programmes and initiatives, the foundation drives values of innovation and inclusive design, with a strong emphasis on sustainability and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Sir Ove Arup was involved in the original design of Sydney Opera House, which began in the 1950s, and his firm Arup continues to play a pivotal role in the building’s long-term development and preservation plan.

Danish architect Jørn Utzon won an international competition for the project in 1957. As the industry’s eminent concrete designer, Sir Ove Arup’s contribution was sought early on, and he began to turn Utzon’s freeform sketches into an architectural reality. Sir Ove Arup’s team confronted an engineering challenge that has since become one of the profession’s epic tales – the design and construction of the building’s enormous, precast concrete shells.”