Gehry maquette unveiled in Sydney

A large scale-model of the Frank Gehry-designed headquarters for UTS Business School has been unveiled in Sydney, allowing the public a close-up look at a project being described as the city's most iconic building since the Opera House.

The Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, due to open later this year, is part of UTS's $1 billion City Campus Master Plan. The redevelopment of UTS's City Campus is entering its final stage, with three buildings due for completion in 2014. Two of those buildings will open this year and the other in early 2015.

The maquette of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building was created by world-renowned architecture firm Gehry Partners and arrived in Sydney from the United States last week. Made possible by the generous sponsorship of AMP Capital, it is now on public display at UTS Tower on Broadway.

UTS Vice-Chancellor Ross Milbourne told guests at the official unveiling that the campus redevelopment was "poised to deliver education in very new and exciting ways, ways education hasn't been approached by universities at any stage in the past."

"An important part of this campus redevelopment and the way we go about our new teaching programs and educational experiences will be the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, designed by Frank Gehry," Prof Milbourne said. "This will provide state-of-the-art facilities and innovative technologies to enhance teaching and learning, putting UTS firmly on the international map of business education.

Picture by Anna Zhu Photography & Film

"The maquette we are unveiling tonight allows staff, students and friends to fully appreciate the unique design and internal elements of what is widely regarded as Sydney's most iconic structure since the Opera House."

None of this would be possible without the enormous generosity of Dr Chau Chak Wing, the businessman whose leadership gift of $25 million had helped fund the new building along with a student scholarship program, he said.

"Dr Chau's gift will benefit Sydneysiders and UTS students for generations to come."

Both Prof Milbourne and UTS Business School Dean Roy Green emphasised that, as striking as the exterior of the building is, what's truly revolutionary is what will happen on the inside.

"It's not just the iconic nature of Frank Gehry's architecture that appealed to us but the way in which it exemplifies our approach to business education," Prof Green said.

Gehry believed "a building starts from the functionality of the spaces – it doesn't start from the outside, and we understand that", Green said.

Gehry is the creator of such internationally renowned buildings as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Peter B. Lewis Building for the Weatherhead School of Management in Cleveland, Ohio; and 8 Spruce St in New York City, the tallest residential tower in the Americas.

Gehry Partners Senior Associate Brad Winkeljohn supervised the reconstruction of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building maquette upon its arrival in Sydney and talked guests through the building's design process, noting similarities with UTS's collaborative approach to research and learning and in its engagement with industry.

"The ideas of collaboration and working with others to innovate, to do new things, is absolutely critical in our architecture too," he said. "It's something Frank talks about quite often.

"[Design] happens with the intelligence and information of others – it doesn't happen with just one firm, one person, one idea."

The university's approach to collaboration and innovation became part of the design process. "Frank wanted to find a way to help reinforce that, to help make that happen, to provide places for people to be able to communicate across different disciplines, [to share] different ideas."

He wanted to create with the university a building that would excite people and encourage them to engage with the Business School.

"One of the critical things about making Frank's architecture is that it's not him making a shape and then us putting the scheduled accommodations in that shape – it's dynamic between the two, the spaces and the activities. The things that happen inside push back out and create some of these interesting spaces."

Winkeljohn explained how, for example, Gehry had responded to the tight, urban site.

"He found the site very challenging … but he actually liked that challenge," Winkeljohn said. "You'll see in the early models slices through the building, in an effort to bring in light, and in the end those became the collaborative spaces, those spaces where you can see two floors up, where you can see people talking together two floors below.

"The spaces in between are extremely important to Frank," Winkeljohn said. "He thinks that's where the juice is, that's where things really happen."