Following the demolition of the Dairy Farmers
Co-operative Milk Company’s warehouse in 2010, until the
beginning of preliminary excavation in early 2012, the site of the DrChau
Chak Wing Building was used as an open-air parking lot. In those days the place
looked more or less like a void surrounded by other, yet-to-change, rusty and
muddy spaces. In early 2010 the new Goods Line pedestrian link didn’t
exist; most of the new UTS facilities were still on paper and Frank Gehry’s
first sketch of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building was still to be drawn. How,
then, have we moved from that situation to the one we can experience today?
How, in other words, did change take place?
Building a new facility is neither a matter only of
designing it see Concept, p.81 nor is it only a matter of complex
engineering calculus and complex, demanding and skilled work see Construction,
p.121. Before design, bricks, joints, concrete and cables fit together there
are people who meet, speak, argue … and dream of
possible futures. The building may not even be there in their thoughts: it
materialises only at a certain point, as an intersection of needs, wishes and
actions that, like threads, become woven into a fabric. To grasp how this
actually occurs we need to confront the process of change. Rather than
understanding change in its most canonical form — as matter of stages, a passage
from A the parking lot to B the building — one needs to focus on the processual
movements between A and B. In other words it is necessary to move from amacro
perspective — which tells us the obvious: we don’t have
a parking lot anymore — to a micro one:
[F]rom
a distance the macro level of analysis, when the observer examines the flow
of events that constitute organising, they see what looks like repetitive
action, routine, and inertia dotted with occasional episodes of revolutionary
change. But a view from closer in the micro level of analysis suggests
ongoing adaptation andadjustment.1
Looking closely at these micro-movements it is possible to
unravel the heterogeneous set of material and immaterial elements that
gradually become woven together, held together by the discursive, visionary and
emotional bonds they share and by the power and interests guiding them.
Despite what the commercial management literature says, the process is not
necessarily a harmonious one and cannot be planned in the form of a step-by-step
guide. As the story of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building commission shows,
processes of change are characterised not only by careful planning and hard
work but also by their alignment to other changes both contextual and broader
and serendipitous encounters.2
We have already addressed the first contextual change —
initiated both by the UTS City Campus Master Plan and by other developments
affecting Ultimo see Context, p.17. The second broader change
influencing the development of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building related to the
ways in which business education has gradually been subject to redefinition,
rethinking, indeed, even contestation, in recent years. Such redesign has been
made in an attempt to address the challenges of an increasing globalising
world, as well as in response to the perception by many commentators that
business schools, particularly in their finance and economics disciplines, were
a contributory factor inducing the irrational exuberance of financialisation
that bankrupted major economies globally. Leading business schools are thus
redesigning their curricula, introducing a new emphasis on interdisciplinary
approaches, experiential learning, and creativity, which are perceived, in
part, as a panacea for the above issues.3 The new emphasis parallels a
renewed attention being paid to those spaces in which learning takes place,
typified by the increased number of business schools designed by
internationally renowned architects.4 The changes undertaken by the UTS Business School can be
seen as largely aligning with this framework. Thealignment
was initiated with the appointment of a new dean for the UTS Business School in
2008, Professor Roy Green. Green had a clear idea of how to pursue UTS’ main
goal to become a ‘world leading university of technology’, in
part informed by what other global business schools were doing at the time:
How
would we do that? We’d do that by linking creativity,technology
and innovation. That’s really theethos of theplace.
A ‘strategic conversation’ was organised to strengthen and test new and emergent
ideas. The conversation, conducted and facilitated by a consulting company,
which lasted from April through to December 2009, consisted of a series of
workshops in which members of the UTS Business School discussed the world after
the financial crisis in terms of the challenges confronting business education.
Key points of change were identified, among which were the need for a better
integration of
the different disciplines and curricula, a more interactive and creative
approach to teaching, and the importance of forging and maintaining strong
connections with industry.
At that time the Dean had won the Business School’s
approval for the construction of a new building, something that played an
important role in the conversation. Attention turned to the ways in which the
building presently occupied by the school did not facilitate interactive
engagement, serendipitous collaboration between different areas and
interdisciplinary work generally. The new space, it was strongly suggested, in
conversations led by the Dean and the consultants, should reflect the emerging
stress being placed on interaction, flexibility and creativity in the new
vision that was being developed. A new building was seen as a medium for
achieving the kinds of integrated and more porous teaching and learning experiences
that the Dean’s vision for the UTS Business School was aiming to
provide.
At the time the building was no more than a letter of
intent – no architect had been appointed to design it. However,
during a conversation with the Dean Roy Green, Stewart Clegg and Faculty
Manager Bill Paterson, Maureen Thurston – at the time, one of the
consultancy associates facilitating the strategic conversation – who
happened to have known Gehry for more than 30 years, suggested Frank Gehry as a
possible architect. Gehry had worked with business schools previously: in 2002
his design for the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland was built; he was also responsible for the Peter B.
Lewis Library 2008 at Princeton University, and the Ray and Maria Stata
Center 2004 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT. Gehry’s work
was seen as the perfect representation of many of the strategies formulating
the new vision of the Business School. Having said that, it is one thing to
think of Gehry; it is a totally different endeavour to have him working with
you. With the subsequent enthusiastic support of UTS Vice-Chancellor Ross
Milbourne, Thurston offered to contact Gehry. This is her account of the story:
So what actually happened was, it was a bit of a flash.
I went up to [the dean] and [...] I mentioned to him, just offhandedly: Look,
if you’re interested, would you
like to have the equivalent of Frank Gehry do the building? He looked at me and
he said, yes that would be good. I said, well if you’re serious, I can give him a call. He said [...] yes
that’d be great so I called Frank over the weekend. Frank, I
love him dearly but he still challenged me and said, are you sure that this is something that’s worth my time? I go, yes and he says, and this is
project, is it really good to go? I go, yes, it really is good to go. [. . .]
He said, okay then I’ll come. I’m flying back from Dubai, I’ll just swing over and visit.
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