"Sydney's Ugliest Building"
The Tower has been described very colourfully and identified numerous times as Sydney's ugliest building, notably in the Sydney Morning Herald, by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, and with understatement as "just not appealing" by a senior officer of neighboring University of Sydney. Architecture critic and author Elizabeth Farrelly called it "conspicuous, defiant, detested"., Journalist and author Mike Carlton described it as "a menacing concrete monolith in an architectural genre that the old East German Stasi brought to perfection".
The Tower's visibility in the CBD sky-line has also been described positively, as marking Sydney as a University town. Then President of NSWIT Werner considered that the central city site had 'paid off' as it allowed easy access to the Tower buildings because the transport system was good, however the notoriously slow speed at which the building lifts operated before their renovation almost negated this. 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."
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