On 17 December, when Frank Gehry unveiled the model of the building he has designed for the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), the vice-chancellor, Ross Milbourne, told the press: "We've got the Opera House, and it's hard to say we are going to beat that, but from what I've seen we'll have an equally outstanding icon at this end of Sydney." Gehry broke in: "We don't want to beat that." Too late. The entire Australian media announced his building as a rival for the opera house.
The Sydney Opera House may be one of the best known structures in the world, but it is also a worse building than anything Gehry would want to put his name to. The original design by Danish architect Jørn Utzon was rejected by the Australian judges in 1956, only to be reinstated. By the time the opera house opened in 1973, it was more than 10 times over budget. Utzon struggled to protect his vision of a building made of sails until 1966, when he was obliged to close his Sydney office and return to Denmark, because the New South Wales state government would not meet his fees. Government architects took over the project.
In the 60s, there was no way of making Utzon's paper nautilus volutes. The roof shells were eventually realised in clunky ceramic tiles. The interior makes a nonsense of the black-opal seascape outside, and the auditoria don't work. The tinkering goes on. In 1999, Utzon re-designed the reception hall. He died in 2008, without ever having returned to Australia to see the finished building. Gehry has got to believe that UTS will be better clients in the 2010s than the various NSW governments were in the 1950s and 60s.
Utzon had spectacular Bennelong Point as his site; his white building would be visible against the ultramarine waters of the harbour from all points of the compass, not least from the giant span of Sydney harbour bridge. Gehry will have to make do with a car park on the corner of Ultimo Road and Omnibus Lane. This inner suburban area is one of narrow streets and mean houses interspersed with utilitarian structures of overbearing dreariness. When the project was first announced, Gehry was asked if he liked the site. He answered: "I like the problem." The most exciting aspect of his new building is its contribution to the raised pedestrian network suspended over the congested roadways around it, which predates Gehry's concept by 10 years. Gehry's bigger buildings are usually visible from high-speed traffic arteries; people wanting to understand the volumes of this one might have to travel past it on Sydney's despised monorail.
It makes small odds that the Australian press has already dubbed Gehry's building the "brown bag". When young Australian architects describe themselves as embarrassed by its "dowdy proportions", attention should be paid. UTS is already responsible for the most brutal buildings in Ultimo; it might now be making a mistake of a different kind. Imagine five brown paper bags with 15 windows cut in each side, scrunched up and then unscrunched and stacked together, and you've pretty much got it. The concept is so Frank Gehry that it could almost be self-parody, and that's before you realise that the pierced, flared and rolled east facade is clad in brick, in pretended hommage to "the dignity of Sydney's urban brick heritage". The earliest housing in Ultimo was built of sandstone, a material in which the achievement of flares and frills is relatively easy. When Gehry claims that in draping rectangular solids he is simply following the example of Michelangelo, he must know he is talking nonsense. He calls the building a tree house apparently because it has a core of public spaces from which more secluded spaces branch off. It looks more like an abandoned termites' nest.
Milbourne was inspired to approach Gehry by the Ray and Maria Stata Centre he designed for MIT, completed in 2004. In 2007 MIT brought a lawsuit against the Gehry partnership, claiming serious defects in design and execution. The matter has now been settled out of court. Gehry says that initial problems are only to be expected with complex and innovative construction. The western elevation of Gehry's UTS building is to be walled off by huge rectangular sheets of glass, which are expected to mirror fractured sections of the surrounding cityscape. With so much glass trapping the blinding Australian afternoon sun, and so much dazzle, the UTS building is likely to have costly problems of its own.
Gehry is building in Sydney because Australia is one of the very few countries in the world that is not experiencing a recession. UTS has an enviable billion dollars to spend on its 10-year programme of renewal; the new building will cost something in the region of A$150m (£96.5m). The Gehry partnership has the logistical expertise to get the building up on schedule and within budget. History will not be repeated.