Widely regarded as the ''ugliest building in Sydney'', the UTS tower is usually the subject of derision and complaint. It's the ungainly middle finger on Broadway, evidence that modernist architects in the 1960s were out of touch with humanity, complicit in an architectural ''up yours'' to all things beautiful.

But is it all that bad? I might be alone here, but I rather like the UTS tower. I may even go so far as to say I love it.

'The ugliest building in Sydney' ... the UTS building. Credit:Quentin Jones

Designed in 1964 by the NSW Government Architects Office, it was intended as a suite of seven towers, for the then NSW Institute of Technology. The plan was reduced to three, and in the end to a single tower of 27 storeys, with a truncated second building beside it. The tower and its chunky little brother are bound together by a podium, and together these structures are a significant example of brutalist modernism in Sydney. That fact alone makes them architecturally meaningful, but there is more to be valued here than architectural history.

The carefully wrought Jenga-like stacks of the tower give it more of a horizontal emphasis than a vertical one, despite the fact that it is a tall building. Then there are those smooth corners - the doorways and windows are accented by satisfying rounded edges.