Orange inspires design for new little neighbour of the Opera House Design dilemma: Rachel Neeson contemplates her challenge in the rooftop garden of her Potts Point practice. How do you design a building that will sit next to the most famous building in the world? If you're Sydney architect Rachel Neeson, whose small, award-winning practice has quietly won a competition to create a new visitor centre for the Sydney Opera House, you reach for a piece of fruit. "We picked up an orange and thought 'this is where it all unfurls'," Neeson said, echoing Danish architect Jorn Utzon, who once resorted to an orange to help explain the Opera House's structural complexity. However, neither Neeson nor the Opera House were willing to reveal further details of her winning design, which is at the concept stage, with the architect admitting only that it is a "challenging exercise." "It has to be really discreet, but at the same time if it's too shy no one will know it's there," she said. That is the dilemma. Opera House chief executive Louise Herron launched a fund-raising campaign for the centre on Sunday after the 40th anniversary concert on the Opera House forecourt, evoking I.M. Pei's pyramid outside the Louvre as a comparable symbol of institutional renewal. "As well as providing information, the centre will be a place for people to sit and contemplate the building, ask questions and buy tickets to shows and tours," Ms Herron said. The aim is to build a permanent place for thematic interpretation about the site and its heritage, including, importantly, its Aboriginal heritage. The centre will be near the Macquarie Street roundabout and "sited to minimise disruption to sight lines to the Opera House for visitors." It attracts more than 8.2 million visitors each year. Sydney Opera House Trust chairman John Symond started the fund-raising, donating $150,000 towards the project's estimated $1 million to $1.5 million cost. A Federal Government grant, which requires matching funding by the Opera House, will provide a further $500,000. "Utzon was 38 when he won the Opera House design competition, and the goal of the competition was to offer this significant opportunity to a younger architect as a symbol of Opera House renewal," Ms Herron said. Neeson's entry was selected from an undisclosed number of invited entries by a panel of "esteemed" architects, including NSW Government Architect Peter Poulet. The Potts Point practice employs fewer than 10 people and is best known outside architecture circles for the recently opened Prince Alfred Park Pool in Surry Hills. Neeson's husband and practice partner Nick Murcutt died in 2011. She said he would have been thrilled with the commission. I hope he's up there popping champagne corks for me.