Sydney: UTS Business School (Australia)

Anyone who has followed the career of Frank Gehry will have seen his continuous experiments with materials and explorations of form, using a very personal collage method to sculpt and assemble the various pieces. Those that haven’t followed may see it as random, but those who have will know that this shape-making goes together with very pragmatic considerations of how the building works and how it will be used and experienced by its occupants and the wider community.

The UTS School of Building, also known as the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, is the first Frank Gehry building built in Australia, and it too follows these principals – all sculpted and complex on the outside and more practical and straightforward on the inside.

The undulating brick facade (with special bricks made for this project by Austral Bricks), pop-out windows, and fractured sheets of glass are all the most recent manifestations of themes Gehry has explored at various points in his career. With each new project there is a new twist here or more of a polish there – can I really make a brick wall look like a draped piece of fabric? Like a musician or painter exploring similar themes in different ways through each new work, Gehry keeps exploring his themes, and with the UTS School of Building, Gehry has delivered a bravura addition to the architectural landscape of Sydney