Sydney Opera House

I have never seen a modern building like it. Or felt it. It's smooth in one direction, like snake skin. It's almost brutalist poured concrete—for which I have a big soft spot, love the National Theater in London for instance, those heavy heavy doors and the framework that looks like a skeleton in a Geiger painting. What a masterpiece though. It's almost unspeakable, how it sits there at the edge of the harbor, and are those wings or are they pieces of shell, or fins?

Douglas Kahn (“Doug is my co-pilot”) tells me that the first Hothouse (the name of our event, sort of sounds like ecological “think tank,” figuratively, no?) was the opera house. No images yet—I'll upload my pics soon.