Sydney U-turn over Opera House architect

The relationship between the people of Sydney, Australia and Jorn Utzon (pictured), the Danish architect who designed the city's Opera House, one of the world's most iconic modern buildings, took a bizarre new turn this week when 250 Opera House staff gathered to sing Happy Birthday in honour of his 90th birthday.

The fact that Utzon was not there - and that a video of the serenade will have to be sent to him in Denmark - is no surprise. The architect has never returned to Sydney since he quit the project in 1966, seven years before the building was finished, because of budget problems and a bitter dispute with the New South Wales government over his artistic vision.

Back then, the building which in 2007 would be placed on the Unesco World Heritage list alongside the Acropolis and the Taj Mahal, was a joke in Sydney. Critics likened its soaring white shells to "nuns packing into a scrum" and "albino turtles mating".

In 1999, Utzon finally made some sort of peace with the Opera House when he agreed to work on refurbishing the interiors, which he did not design and are acknowledged to have poor acoustics. But he took on the work without actually returning to the site of his humiliation.

Intriguingly, the Sydney Morning Herald's report of the 90th birthday tribute makes no mention of any controversy between the city and the man whose vision did so much to put Sydney on the world map.