The Sydney Opera House is so perfect for its site, so right as a national symbol, it seems like it was inevitable. But before architect Joern Utzon’s masterpiece was built, the design was the subject of national controversy. Certainly the opera house was the compelling reason Utzon won this year’s Pritzker Prize, but the judges noted that Utzon’s career demonstrates a succession of buildings infused with “a sense of architecture as art, and natural instinct for organic structures related to site conditions.”