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Photo: Andrew Worssam
Crinkles in convention
The brainchild of one of the world’ s most esteemed and unorthodox architects was always going to cause a stir with its exterior looks – but the real achievement is on the inside.
By Andrew Bracey
The striking external form of UTS’ s recently unveiled business school, designed by Frank Gehry, has been likened to everything from an abstract clay sculpture to – most commonly – a crumpled paper bag.
The school, officially named the Dr Chau Chak Wing building, has gained added public interest, as it is also the first building in Australia to have been designed by the Canadian-American architect, perhaps best known for Prague’ s Dancing House( Czech Republic) and Bilbao’ s Guggenheim Museum( Spain).
Gehry’ s creations have long divided architecture experts as well as the public, with an approach that seemingly bends not only the laws of physics and tradition, but minds and preconceptions.
Yet despite the headlines and attention the building’ s outward appearance has generated, the university’ s deputy vicechancellor resources, Patrick Woods, maintains the key paradigm shift UTS was seeking was pedagogical.
Woods sat down with Campus Review to discuss the philosophy behind a building that has reshaped the Sydney skyline but which he hopes will also restructure the way academics and students work, study, learn and interact.
CR: In hiring Frank Gehry, was UTS setting out to create something iconic? PW: It wasn’ t a case of the university going out in the first instance and developing an iconic building; the iconic building element was in parallel to what we needed from an educational perspective. We needed a building that would allow pedagogy to operate in a different way and indeed for the academic staff to act more effectively. The fact that Frank ended up as the architect was to a large extent serendipitous. It was not a case of the university going out and seeking an iconic architect for an iconic building; however, when the opportunity arose for Frank to design the building we were very excited because it allowed us to grab the opportunity to create something that showcased the university’ s focus on design thinking and creativity as well as design a building from the inside out to allow members of the academic community to interact as we believe they should.
How were the functional requirements of the building able to be meshed with the overall vision of an architect such as Frank Gehry? When Frank and the university first began discussions about the design of the building, naturally the university was keen to understand what it would look like and Frank’ s words were“ trust me”. Given his history and accomplishments, we did indeed trust him with respect to the skin of the building.
Frank then, along with the university, focused all of his attention and our attention on the inside of the building and it was through Frank’ s efforts and his team’ s efforts that we teased out how the building should and could be used to achieve the outcomes the university was looking for.
What was Gehry’ s plan for the internal spaces? It was at that stage that Frank came up with the concept of, in his words, the treehouse. Because it was the treehouse concept that allowed the members of the academic community to interact with one another, as well as the student body, most effectively. We then continued many workshops facilitated by the Gehry team to enable our needs as a university to be translated into what would be the interior design of the building and Frank built dozens upon dozens of models that the university and the staff reviewed. Eventually we settled on the inside of the building meeting all of our needs that had been teased out as part of those workshops. One of the most impressive things about Frank and his team was their ability to listen. There was never a feeling from the university that a design was being imposed on us, it was always a highly collaborative interaction. ■
The Chau Chak Wing building will officially open to students from semester one next year.
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