Toronto Royal Ontario Museum | ?m | ?s | Daniel Libeskind

Ohh, MetroMan's post gave me an idea.
Wouldn't it look GREAT if lights were installed in between the slats of metal that cover the crystal? At night the entire thing would glow. I wonder how much a retro-fit would cost to install fiberoptic lights in between those slats? They could be programmed a la CN tower to change colour, move in patterns, create images (pointalism)....

My only complaint about the crystal is that they should have paid more attention to the fine details before opening it up to the public. Also, the public plaza needs something more dramatic than angled lines of granite and odd-shaped benches. There needs to be a large piece of art in the centre. I am thinking of that giant spider that is just outside of the National Gallery in Ottawa (I cant remember the artists name). The space needs something large that the public can interact with.

The plain lawn is fine. It downplays the Queens Park Circle entrance, which is now no longer the main entrance.
 
Their website has been updated a couple of times this month - with sneak peek photos of several galleries, including the dinosaurs.
 
I think the artifacts will add that colour. While the building is intended to dazzle, it's also meant to fade into the background should visitors want to focus on the artifacts, hence the muted colours of the building itself.
 
Jdot said:
My only complaint about the crystal is that they should have paid more attention to the fine details before opening it up to the public. Also, the public plaza needs something more dramatic than angled lines of granite and odd-shaped benches. There needs to be a large piece of art in the centre. I am thinking of that giant spider that is just outside of the National Gallery in Ottawa (I cant remember the artists name). The space needs something large that the public can interact with.
Click to expand...
Off topic, but I've often thought the same thing about Dundas Square. When the fountains are shut off the square loses its centrepiece. Most of the great squares in the world have monuments of some kind as focal points that end up being people magnets.

edit: that includes Nathan Philips Square, with its reflecting pool that's a draw year round. Even the little square at Danforth and Logan has a centrepiece that draws people.
 
What do others about how our crystal compares to Denver's? I love the windows on ours but the cladding is a bit disappointing compared to Denver's. I would give the slight edge to Denver.

5eec59c2-5a63-4e0b-87aa-3bb0f3842f29.jpg


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vs.

20071026_denvercrystal15.jpg


20071023_denvercrystal1.jpg
 
I agree, the cladding on Denver's looks a bit more polished. I also like the shapes of Denver's more too.

Having said that, the ROM windows make a big difference, inside and out, giving it an edge.
 
Denver's Crystals are also the clear winner in the "leak" dept. Major challenges there.

Adam, despite their similarities... these crystals are apples and oranges (holy mixed-metphors batman), largely because of site context.

Denver's basically sits on a blank, uncluttered canvas where it's only (exterior) job is to be a lovely crystalline sculpture. Hey, look at me folks.

ROM's crystals emerge out of limestone... uncut, unpolished diamonds if you will. Though not entirely successful, I don't think the Lee Chin sodomizes the old ROM at all... quite the contrary. The crystals, though large, are revealed by the old museum... growing out of the limestone.

The marriage may not be perfect but ROM also has to contend with being jammed onto busy Bloor Street... not sitting alone on an empty shelf, waiting to be admired as pure sculpture.
 
An interesting link provided by Adma. I think the opinion is valid but I disagree with some parts. I think the context of the crystal works spectacularly well. It is a grand gesture, and I like grand gestures and all the more so in a city like Toronto which seems to demure from them a little too often. However, one reader response quote in the blog interested me in that it was so telling of how outsiders perceive Toronto:

"Note that the review above was much influenced by the environment outside the museum. Perhaps things would have been different if Bloor and Avenue had the kind of lush landscaping, pavers, street furniture, signage guidelines and architectural restoration that now characterizes many American cities. Toronto is extremely behind in these aspects of public space quality, and its citizens are rather ignorant of the city's relative decline. Very sad. It is perhaps best that the writer is not comparing riding a TTC streetcar to Denver RTD light rail or another depressing result would ensue, again for many of the same urban-public-space-dollars reasons."

An impulse of wounded civic pride might delude me into thinking that Toronto's mess is merely 'messy urbanism' as some who overthink these things might suggest. Instead, we can't keep ingnoring Cyrano's nose, no matter how fantastic the rest of the portrait may be. Toronto is broke, and it shows. The public realm in Toronto needs fixing, and it shows. Toronto is failing to do what is being done extensively in other cities, which leaves us looking dowdy, tired and unfinished, which is a shame considering that Toronto has most other cities beat in many other ways too numerous to mention.

The ROM, however, is fine and we should be proud of it, despite the minor criticisms, but it is an interesting case that brings home the message that as a city we are not judged merely by starchitect buildings and cool designs but that it is also about the optics of the public realm and how it looks and functions. Bottom line, it's all in the details.
 
Yewder, amen to that. Your points cannot be stressed enough. If we could spend a nickle on landscaping for every person who gets excited on this board because "the skyline is shifting to the east/west/north/south". we would actually have a decent streetscape. ;)
 
ganja:

I think the photos you've used is somewhat misleading - the ROM set is poorly taken, on a dreary overcast day; the DAM ones are taken at dusk, with the most dramatic lighting effects and certainly appears more professionally done. Not quite a fair comparison.

The review itself is kind of silly - of course the Crystal looks out of place - it isn't situated in an architectural theme park like DAM is (i.e. DAM/Museum Residences by Libeskind; Denver Library by Michael Graves). The sheer audacity of Libeskind's building in the middle of an existing urban area that shocks and awe. And let's face it - the ROM addition has only one principle facade - Bloor Street - given the nature of the building as an addition. Of course it's going to be less of an object than DAM, which is offered the possiblity of poche just given the nature of the site.

With regards to deteriorating urban realm - there is a reason why $30M is going to be sunk into Bloor revitalization; with regards to Denver LRT, perhaps those who drool over it should take note of 1. who's paying for it and 2. what kind of fiscal tools the city has, vis-a-vis Toronto.

AoD
 
Hard for me to see the Crystal wing of ROM and/or Hamilton wing of DAM as a continuance of Post Modern as referenced in Adam's article. On this subject, at least, Libeskind is somewhere in that unclassified territory that you may place Calatrava's Chicago Spire or Quadricci wing of MAM, Gang's Aqua or Gehry's Barcelona Museum. (The L Tower is another matter altogether.)

These and several others are structures in search of a label: not yet agreed upon and not yet needed. In general, when one goes to various professional trade shows, they use a number of non-commital categories such as "Irregular Façades and/or Forms" to discuss these type buildings. There is no reference to the past in these structures, which is more typical of Post Modern. And while one can take Libeskind's words about crystals and crystal shapes into consideration, it is like Calatrava using metaphors about flowers, shells, and Native American campfire smoke on the Prairie to describe his inspiration for Chicago Spire - artistic asides rather than explorations of Architectural content.

Many of us have finally seen both the Denver and Toronto versions, and while it is fair to compare them, I doubt that you could improve the Toronto version by substituting the Denver, or vice versa.

If I were forced to pick one over the other, the titanium/granite cladding (versus the aluminium in Toronto) and overall exuberance, would bias my view toward the Denver version. But given what the Crystal wing has meant for Toronto, despite all the controversy that surround it now, Libeskind may have had a greater impact here than he ever would have in Denver. And that impact will be for the better ... in the long term.
 
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