Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry will be in Sydney on 2 February for the official opening of his first Australian project, the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
Gehry, along with Chinese businessman and philanthropist Dr. Wing and UTS leaders will speak at the opening.
The new business school and hi-tech learning hub celebrated its ‘tools down’ stage in November last year, and has been much praised and criticised (“bad Gaudi”, according to Fairfax columnist Elizabeth Farrelly) for its undulating brick façade.
However, UTS has asked the public to look past the ‘iconic façade’, and into the spaces and types of environment the building itself offers. According to the University, Gehry’s team began by building a range of models for the faculty team to comment on and approve, and only when the University was happy with the internal layout and its associated learning experiences was the external skin designed and added on.
