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Whether you’re fitting cantilever racking in your home or looking at the structure of a bridge, the effects of architecture are everywhere. Great architecture isn’t just functional, with devices such as pillars, facades and wire partitions, these creations can become considered real works of art. Australia is a country not usually known for great architecture, as this is usually a comment reserved for countries that have been in Western society for thousands of years and have a long history of art, but there are a number of famous works of architecture in this country. This article will discuss a few of these buildings and the cultural implications on the country.

The Sydney Opera House is located in Sydney, Australia and was created on the orders of Queen Elizabeth the Second. A Hungarian man, who did not feel his efforts were properly acknowledged, designed it. At the time of his death a couple of years ago, however, he was acknowledged by the Australian public, with news shows carrying the story of his death and the effect his creation has had.

The Opera House is located in Sydney Harbor, and going over this harbor is the Sydney Harbor Bridge. This bridge took decades to build and is one of Australia’s most famous landmarks, along with the Opera House. It opened in the 1950’s to considerable controversy. At the time the ribbon was about to be cut to mark the opening of the bridge, a man rode in on horseback and shouted, “I declare the bridge open!”, striking the sword he was carrying down and cutting the ribbon. This wasn’t a prepared event but the act of a brazen man breaking the law, and he was promptly arrested. When the bridge “officially” opened the ribbon was put back together. Despite this, a lot of Australians like to think of this lone man as the one who really opened the bridge, and admire his zaniness and courage at such an act.

While these are the two most popular of Australia’s designs, there are a lot of others. Melbourne is the capital of the state of Victoria, and has the park known as Federation Square. Some think this to be a rather bizarrely shaped design, with the large SBS Television building being designed in a seemingly random fashion, somewhat similar to the new London Olympics logo.

Australia is also the place of a rather weird design practice. While no one is really sure why, there is a number of tourist’s locations situated around Australia that have sculptures of objects that are created on a very large scale. Some of them are known as The Big Prawn, The Big Banana, The Big Marino, The Big Pineapple; to name a few. It’s not really clear why these structures have become a hallmark of Australia, but it might reflect something about the strange Australian sense of humor.

While there’s nothing to match Australia with countries like Italy and Greece in terms of feats of design, there are a number of structures that regularly attract tourists looking to see unique designs in a beautiful setting.

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