The original design of the Sydney opera house featured roof sections with unique curves. This caused two major problems: (1) the structural analysis was very difficult, and (2) it made construction more expensive since they could not reuse construction details among the roof sections. Eventually the engineers realized they could approximate the roof sections as segments from a single sphere. This greatly improved both problems.

This post inspired by a recent episode of the Cautionary Tales podcast. I never knew what a messy project the opera house had been.