The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Tower is located at 1 Broadway

Broadway, New South Wales

Broadway is a road in Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The road constitutes the border between the suburbs of Ultimo and Chippendale . Broadway is also an urban locality....

 NSW, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. On more than one occasion it has been singled out as Sydney's ugliest building. For many UTS

University of Technology, Sydney

The University of Technology Sydney is a university in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The university was founded in its current form in 1981, although its origins trace back to the 1870s. UTS is notable for its central location as the only university with its main campuses within the Sydney CBD...

 staff and students, this has become a matter of pride. The Tower has provoked beautification schemes from irate architects. It has inspired kitsch

Kitsch

Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...

 material culture in the form of Tower lapel pin

Lapel pin

A lapel pin is a small pin often worn on the lapel of a dress jacket. Lapel pins can be purely ornamental or can indicate the wearer's affiliation with an organization or cause; for example, American Flag lapel pins became very popular in the United States, especially among politicians, following...

s and snow domes

Snow globe

A snow globe is a transparent sphere, usually made of glass, enclosing a miniaturized scene of some sort, often together with a model of a landscape. The sphere also encloses the water in the globe; the water serves as the medium through which the "snow" falls. To activate the snow, the globe is...

, both now sought-after objects, and has given rise to various stories about its design and construction. Another beautification scheme, suggested by the architecture company Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, involved covering the building with a lightweight composite mesh textile

Textile

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

, which would be able to store rainwater, generate electricity

Electricity

Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...

 and cool down the building, thus transforming it into a self-sufficient body.

Plans

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 storeys. And by 1966, three buildings were planned of thirteen, twenty-two and sixteen storeys with two basements and five podium levels.
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.
By the mid-1970s, with cutbacks in Commonwealth funding, the grand plan was reduced to two buildings, the second to be beheaded

Decapitation

Decapitation is the separation of the head from the body. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, knife, wire, or by other more sophisticated means such as a guillotine...

. In the euphoria of the late sixties and early seventies, however, with money readily available and the Brickfield Hill

Brickfield Hill (New South Wales)

Brickfield Hill is a small hill in inner city Sydney, Australia. The name was used for the surrounding area in the early days of the city, and today is part of the suburb of Surry Hills.-External links:* *...

 campus bursting at the seams, NSWIT - which became UTS in 1988 and the largest of the institutions which ultimately amalgamated as the new UTS in 1990 - was keen to acquire new buildings.

Construction

Construction commenced in 1969 only two weeks after the State Government

Government of New South Wales

The form of the Government of New South Wales is prescribed in its Constitution, which dates from 1856, although it has been amended many times since then...

 announced the signing of the contract. The site quickly became a huge hole in the ground, 300 feet square and 50 feet deep and a great attraction to passers-by. Due to inclement weather, it quickly filled with water.

Some journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

s from the nearby Fairfax

Fairfax Media

Fairfax Media Limited is one of Australia's largest diversified media companies. The group's operations include newspapers, magazines, radios and digital media operating in Australia and New Zealand. Fairfax Media was founded by the Fairfax family as John Fairfax and Sons, later to become John...

 Building rowed across the flooded excavation site in an idle moment. The continual rain not only delayed work but also posed construction problems particularly with the hydraulic shaft wells. In one attempt to clear them, a deep-sea diver was employed to drill holes allowing the water to move into the sub-strata. This procedure was successful – until it rained again.

As it was being built at the same time as the Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in the Australian city of Sydney. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, finally opening in 1973 after a long gestation starting with his competition-winning design in 1957...

, the Tower became known as "The Broadway Opera House rising," as the Sun

The Sun-Herald

The Sun-Herald is an Australian tabloid newspaper published on Sundays in Sydney by Fairfax Media. It is the Sunday counterpart of The Sydney Morning Herald. In the 6 months to September 2005, The Sun-Herald had a circulation of 515,000...

 newspaper quipped, in costs but in no other way. This was a reference to industrial action by the Builders' Labourers Federation (BLF) particularly over a dispute between its federal and state branch members. On one occasion eight BLF members locked themselves inside two high cranes and refused to come down. A single BLF dispute in 1970 lasted five weeks. The Tower was supposed to grow by a level every three weeks but at one point a level took eighteen months to complete.

Finally, in 1975, administration

Academic administration

An academic administration is a branch of university or college employees responsible for the maintenance and supervision of the institution and separate from the faculty or academics, although some personnel may have joint responsibilities...

 moved into the first few floors also using the podium area while the rest of the Tower was being completed. In 1979, after approximately eight years in construction and at a final cost of $32 million – almost double the original estimate of cost and time – the ‘tallest educational facility in Australia with [27 floors and] thirty-two levels rising 120 metres above the pavement’ was officially opened.Once the first tower was almost complete, the Institute turned its attention to the second. The Commonwealth Government was not forthcoming financially so Building 2 was built to ground level and until NSWIT had signed a contract for completion, covered with a plastic sheet. The building opened in March 1980 with eleven floors instead of the planned twenty-two and with a wider base. But works continued until 1984.

Criticism - "Sydney's ugliest building"

The Tower has been described very colourfully.

Then President of NSWIT Werner considered that the central city site had 'paid off

Return on investment

Return on investment is one way of considering profits in relation to capital invested. Return on assets , return on net assets , return on capital and return on invested capital are similar measures with variations on how “investment” is defined.Marketing not only influences net profits but also...

' as it allowed easy access to the Tower buildings because the transport system was good, however the notoriously slow speed at which the building elevators operate almost negate this. Journalist Elizabeth Farrelly called it "conspicuous, defiant, detested". Professor David Goodman has noted its transformation "from eyesore to icon. Its perceived starkness may be part of a proud image of being down to earth." Former Vice-Chancellor Gus Guthrie commented, "We have a tower, but no one could claim it was an ivory one."

It has been identified numerous times as Sydney's ugliest building, notably in the Sydney Morning Herald, by world-renowned architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry

Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...

, and with understatement

Understatement

Understatement is a form of speech which contains an expression of less strength than what would be expected. This is not to be confused with euphemism, where a polite phrase is used in place of a harsher or more offensive expression....

 as "just not appealing" by a senior officer of neighboring University of Sydney

University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...

.. The Tower's ubiquity in the CBD

Central business district

A central business district is the commercial and often geographic heart of a city. In North America this part of a city is commonly referred to as "downtown" or "city center"...

 sky-line has also been described positively, as marking Sydney as a University town.

UTS, Sydney has a vast array of opportunities in relation to expansion of campus size and location. Although there has been a lot of criticism in regards to the aesthetics of the UTS Tower building, the university's students and staff have been said to adapt and conform to the campus and its facilities offered.