UTS Tower
University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Tower is located at 1 Broadway NSW, Australia. On more than one occasion it has been singled out as Sydney’s ugliest building. For many UTS staff, this has become a matter of pride. The Tower has provoked beautification schemes from irate architects. It has inspired kitsch material culture in the form of Tower lapel pins and snow domes, both now sought-after objects. And it has given rise to various stories about its design and construction.
The original 1964 plan provided for a row of seven twelve-storey buildings on the site. This was gradually modified. In 1965 it was to be four buildings of fifteen, twenty, nineteen and fourteen storey’s. And by 1966, three buildings were planned of thirteen, twenty-two and sixteen storey’s with two basements and five podium levels. By the mid-1970s, with cutbacks in Commonwealth funding, the grand plan was reduced to two buildings, the second to be beheaded.
The plan was to create an ‘indoor campus’ with all facilities being self-contained. An alternative interpretation of the Tower’s rationale was provided by Shoplift, a Student Association magazine. It alleged that the architects had been instructed to develop a building "in which students would not want to congregate". This was in the wake of the 1968 student riots in Paris and elsewhere when fear of student agitation was prevalent.
Other Information
- Location : 1 Broadway, Sydney, NSW, Australia
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