Frank Gehry Unveils "Wrinkly" New Building

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Dec 17th 2010 at 1:01AM

Architect Frank Gehry has revealed his "crinkly, wrinkly" design for the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) business school in Sydney Australia. The new building is his first Australian design. Gehry expects the 11-story treehouse to "generate some questions" but he is hoping that the community will eventually embrace it. The 81-year-old architect is no stranger to controversy and to people hating his designs when they are first revealed.

Construction will begin on the university's campus in central Sydney in 2012 and the building is set to be completed in 2014. It has two separate facades, one of undulating brick and the other of angled sheets of glass. The building will be named the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, after the Australian-Chinese business leader who has donated $25 million for the project.

Gehry also opines on architecture and life in the January issue of Playboy magazine. Gehry sat down with Playboy Contributing Editor David Sheff to discuss why he hates the word starchitect, mankind's inherent love of architecture, criticism of his supposedly 'big ego,' his thoughts on green building and more.

"Ninety-eight percent of buildings are boxes, which tells me that a lot of people are in denial. We live and work in boxes," says Gehry in the interview. "People don't even notice that. Most of what's around us is banal. We live with it. We accept it as inevitable. People say, 'This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me.' Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary."

Gehry goes on to discuss the resistance he faced from local residents in Bilbao when building the Guggenheim saying that in the beginning they hated the building and him but that now it's "a love-in" when he goes to visit. Check out the full interview on PlayboyDigital.com.

Tags: australia, frank gehry, sydney

Filed under: Architecture & Design

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

oldthudman~!!~ Dec 17th 2010 7:17AM

Mr Gehry's design might be controversial and (even) Avant Garde.....Just looking at it however, to me, many of those "wrinklies" would seem to preclude having useful space.........
Glazers would have much hair pulling and perhaps head banging against the wall, trying to fit glass to many of those openings (windows).............