Dr Chau Chak Wing Building
14-28 Ultimo Road, Ultimo
Frank Gehry of Gehry Partners; executive architect Daryl Jackson Robin Dyke. November 2011 to November 2014, opened February 2015. Contemporary.
- Size
- 14 levels, 11 of them occupied (UTS). Wikipedia says 12 or 13 storeys. Gross area 18,413 m² from UTS, 16,030 m² on Wikipedia. Height and width not found; the drawing is estimated
- Material
- About 320,000 bricks in five custom shapes, laid by hand. Angular glass panels on the west side
- Status
- University of Technology Sydney, Business School
This is Frank Gehry’s first building in Australia. UTS engaged his firm in December 2009 and unveiled the design a year later. It is named for Chau Chak Wing, who gave $20 million towards it and $5 million for an endowment for Australia-China scholarships, and the university gives the total cost as $180 million. Wikipedia says the concept was based on a tree house, and reports the description of the brick front as a squashed brown paper bag.
The building has two different fronts. The east side, to the Goods Line, is undulating brick, which UTS says acknowledges the sandstone of the neighbourhood. The west side is angular glass reflecting its surroundings. The brickwork isn’t structural: each brick is tied back to panels behind and only has to resist the wind. No Australian standard covered a wall of this kind, so UTS engineers built a test wall 5 m high and ran more than 100 load tests on it over about six months, to simulate winds above 150 km/h.
Inside are a stainless steel stair and two oval classrooms built from large laminated timber beams. Awards include the Horbury Hunt Commercial Award in 2015 and the Bradfield Award from Engineers Australia in 2016.
Sources
- Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, Wikipedia
- Dr Chau Chak Wing Building media fact sheet, University of Technology Sydney
- UTS engineers advise on Frank Gehry building, University of Technology Sydney
- Dr Chau Chak Wing Building Sydney, e-architect