News: Frank Gehry’s new teaching and research facility for Sydney’s University of Technology has now opened, and has been described as “the most stunning squashed brown paper bag” .
The Dr Chau Chak Wing facility for UTS Organization School is the first creating the 85-year-old Los Angeles-primarily based architect has completed in Australia, and is situated on the university’s city campus, just south of Sydney’s Central Organization District.
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The building’s curvy structure – created making use of 320,000 custom-designed bricks – had prompted critics to evaluate it to a crumpled paper bag. But at the opening ceremony yesterday Australia’s governor general Peter Cosgrove introduced it as “the most lovely squashed brown paper bag I’ve ever noticed”.
Gehry is very best identified for buildings with fluid shapes, from the Walt Disney Concert Hall to the Guggenheim Bilbao, but he has described this project as unique. “I won’t do this constructing anyplace else,” he mentioned for the duration of the opening.
This sandstone-coloured curving brickwork, all laid by hand, is intended to reference Sydney’s architectural heritage.
In contrast, the angular west-facing elevation is produced up of shards of glass, designed to supply fractured reflections of neighbouring buildings.
According to Gehry, the design was inspired by a treehouse. The expressive external kind was a result of the complicated internal layout, described by the architect as “a expanding studying organism with several branches of thought, some robust and some ephemeral and delicate”.
The centrepiece of the principal lobby characteristics a sculptural staircase made from polished stainless steel, while elsewhere on the ground floor is a cafe that opens out to the street.
Two oval-shaped classrooms are framed by 150 large timber beams. A staircase constructed from Victorian ash wraps around a single of these, major up to a student lounge on the floor above.
Other facilities incorporate a theatre developed for technology-supported interaction, as well as a variety of classroom varieties to suit postgraduate students.
A total of 160 bicycle parking spaces are supplied, as effectively as lockers, changing places and showers, expected to encourage students and employees to cycle more.
Due to welcome its 1st students later this month, the UTS Business School was completed as portion of £612 million overhaul of the university’s facilities. It accompanies Denton Corker Marshall’s not too long ago completed engineering faculty, and will be joined later this year by a new graduate wellness and science building.
Photography is by Peter Bennetts.
Site plan 
Level two floor program 
Level three floor program 
Level 4 floor strategy 
Level five floor program 
Level eight floor strategy 
Section 1 
Section two 
Section three
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