Construction will start next year on Australia’s first Frank Gehry-designed building, when the renowned architect's vision for the UTS business school building takes shape in Ultimo, Sydney.

The Dr Chau Chak Wing Building – named after the businessmen who made a $20 million donation to the project - will stand at the corner of Ultimo Road and Omnibus Lane on a site that once housed the Dairy Farmers Cooperative and was most recently a car park. With a projected cost of $150 million, the building’s 16,000 square metres are spread over 11 floors, with completion due for the 2014 academic intake.

The Gehry Factor

The Pritzker Prize-winning architect is responsible for a host of iconic buildings, including the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. He is in high demand by corporate developers and ambitious city planners worldwide. This is not to say he is unwilling to undertake more humble or smaller scale projects, having designed Maggie’s Centre in Ninewalls, Dundee, Scotland – a cancer drop-in centre. Gehry’s own home, a reworking of a 1920s bungalow, has become something of a local landmark. It sports a range of unorthodox materials including corrugated steel, chain link fencing and plywood.

Treehouse Structure

For the internal structure of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, Gehry is said to have been inspired by a treehouse, providing ‘a trunk and core of activity and...branches for people to connect and do their private work.’

The controversial external design is characterised by two external facades - combination of undulating brick that can only be described as crumpled, and large, angled sheets of glass at the rear.