Frank Gehry's first Australian building in Sydney - what do you think?

[Sky_Is_The_Limit]

Frank Gehry has designed this $A150 million building, the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, for the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) at the southern end of the Sydney CBD. Awaiting approval from the New South Wales Government, the building will house the university's business school. It is expected that construction will begin in 2012 and the building will be completed by the 2014 academic year. The Dr Chau Chak Wing Building is part of a $A1 billion architectural upgrade of UTS.

UTS is located on Broadway, a major arterial road that links the Sydney CBD with the western suburbs. Across Broadway from the UTS, Jean Nouvel and Norman Foster have designed buildings for the $A2 billion project known as Central Park...so whilst Sydney is world renowned for its harbour, Opera House and Harbour Bridge, in a few years time the city will have a great 'backdoor' entrance to match it's beautiful frontdoor entrance.

Anyway, enough rambling by me, what do you think of Gehry's latest building? Modern masterpiece? Hideous? Somewhere in between? Vote away and post your comments below!! Here are a few pics;



As viewed from the Broadway side







As viewed from the Darling Harbour side and the monorail



The tree trunk and its 'core of activity'


All images from;
http://www.archdaily.com/98271/dr-ch...g-frank-gehry/

[Uaarkson]

Unsurprisingly awful.

[Paper Ninja]

Originally Posted by Sky_Is_The_Limit

Looks like a poltergeist is sucking it into a hell dimension.

[Taller, Better]

Not my cup of tea... very "Nineties Novelty" looking to me. Sort of "Fred and Ginger" have a mid floor dancing collision. No survivors.

[desertpunk]

It'll be a bit like the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute in Las Vegas:

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/swissrunner/


BTW, Gehry's models always look like crap.

[Dimethyltryptamine]

The model looks like shit, but depending on the materials used, could look awesome. I'll reserve judgment until I see a computer-generated render, or the real thing. Either way though, it's will be nice to have a Gehry building here.

[dark_shadow1]

The model look horrible- but it might be just because of the horrible color.

[Ribarca]

I agree that it looks a bit tacky in this color. In titanium it could look great. Then again what doesn't look great in titanium.

[Taller, Better]

I'm afraid he is stuck in the past, and desperately trying to outdo the novelty trend that has pretty much ended by now. Compared to the simplistic beauty of his Bilbao Guggenheim this is looking like a freakish attention grabber.
Re: Lou Ruvo Brain Institute, the long flat rectangular titanium tiles do not lend themselves well to smooth organic curves. They look hammered and bent into place to fit the shape. The overall effect is somewhat prison-like.

[stevensp]

it looks a bit like a bunch of mud putted together
but when you give this design a cool cladding and material im sure it will result in something nice..

[ThatDarnSacramentan]

That model is atrocious. I'll wait for a computer rendering as well, but the overall design doesn't look very good. On the two sides, you have long, smooth curves, but in the middle the curves all bunch together like a crumpled paper bag. As much as I love and admire a lot of Gehry's work, I think he's capable of better.

[socrates#1fan]

This is ugly and destructive on a completely new level.
Is there a contest to see who can have the ugliest structure? If so, this structure would win no discussion!
Frank Gehry is all about shock value, I wonder if he even tries at this point or if he just mashes up some play dough. His designs are not intended to respect or flow with the order of a city or the humans who created it. It is meant purely for shock and uniqueness for the sake of uniqueness.

[Taller, Better]

Also I wonder how appropriate this type of design is for a business school. I could understand it if it were a School of Art, or an Art Gallery, or a Museum, but it seems like he has approached the design back to front. Imagining a shape, and then trying to jam everything into it. In this case Function follows a very distant second to Form.

[tijuano en el df]

looks like a crumbled piece of cardboard paper. awful!

[Manitopiaaa]

It's gorgeous. I love it. I'd love to have this in my city. It beats any boxy alternative for sure

[Concrete Stereo]

What I think? Even for Gehry's standards this is absolutely horrible.

[White Shadows]

Frank Gehry... repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...

[Botswana]

Ew, WTF is that thing? It looks like it's being sucked into another dimension. Gehry seems to be a hit and miss. I like the dancing house, but this is atrocious. I just hope it's in the suburbs somewhere and doesn't destroy Sydney's skyline.

[Avian001]

Originally Posted by Paper Ninja

Looks like a poltergeist is sucking it into a hell dimension.

Bingo

But again, a model and a real building are two different things. It may look great in reality. The world is big enough to have experiments such as this. If you don't try it, you'll never know.

I agree with the comment about the Brain Institute as well. That building just doesn't look well constructed. It looks like the contractors made mistakes in the cladding.

[Agustin_M]

Looking that model... it looks just horrible. Let's wait to see the final result.