Wright's Baghdad opera house and Gammage Auditorium: in search of regional modernity

  To build a mosque to-day as it used to be built, will be a weakness--a
  mistake. To try to do the architecture of the past with new scientific
  methods would not be right in principle. But there is a spirit in that
  ancient life. There is unique spirit in all this antiquity belonging
  peculiarly to the very people who developed it, them whose quality it
  was. There in lies the quality which today should be preserved,
  preserved in whatever you build for the present that is the
  future. (70)

Wright's plea for a modern Baghdad Opera House that nevertheless resonated with regional traditions contrasted with his view of Jorn Utzon's scheme for the Sydney Opera House, whose victory in a world competition was announced in January 1957. Levine has noted that this was among the most widely known contemporaneous designs for opera houses and that Wright was probably aware of it. In fact, not only was he aware of it, but Wright was asked to comment on the design by a Sydney newspaper, whose New York correspondent sent Wright a picture of Utzon's prize-winning entry. Wright responded with a statement that read in part:

  I suppose this reckless design was chosen by official authority
  because it exhibits neither rhyme nor reason for its purpose. This
  circus tent is not architecture. In a free country, a disrupted circus
  tent--even one like this, manifestly blown open and apart by the
  wind--might be used to shelter opera. But why? Why does
  non-constructive, inorganic fantasy appeal to these novices in our
  greatest art? As I take it, architecture should still be significant,
  permanent building--that is, excellent construction.

Wright deemed the project "on the border line of the ridiculous." (71) These comments imply that Wright wanted his later Baghdad Opera House to have constructive solidity, permanent monumentality, and functional appropriateness. With its zigguratlike substructure and massive concrete crescent arch, it was meant to appear substantial rather than tentlike. As Wright wrote to the Development Board in conveying his drawings, "They express a type or style of architecture well suited to either the dignity [or] practical nature of their purpose." The designs "would make of Baghdad and Iraq a modern Mecca for travelers and a place in which to live and find in modern terms the strength and beauty of ancient culture--alive today." (72) His hall's mosquelike associations appear in its orientation, colonnaded portico, domical crown, and minaretlike spire. Yet because the project was typologically an opera house. Wright could adapt it to the Arizona desert, a preliminary idea for which he may have formulated before his trip to Baghdad.

The Loss of Baghdad and the Commission from Arizona State University