Cross-posted from Eye Daily.
Love it or hate it, the ROM’s new addition looks like a giant crystal, and, ugly or not, that makes the new building pretty compelling. The ostentatiousness of the soon-to-be-opened Michael Lee-Chin Crystal has people talking passionately about its aluminum siding, its pointy protrusions that hang over the street, whether or not it deserves to be a Toronto icon and what this new piece of architecture means to our city. Based on the level of discussion alone, the Crystal is already a success. But seeing how the public comes to interact with it after all the hoopla over its completion is over will be the real test.
I took a media tour of the geometric metal structure this afternoon, and I’ve got to say, I agree with Christopher Hume — not about the crystal being comparable to the Parthenon — but about the inside of the building being as much apart of it as the out. From the top floor, in the point furthest south (there are three “points†in all, and not one wall forms a right angle), a sheet of windows offers a wonderful view of the University of Toronto campus below and the city skyline in the distance. It’s in this point that a casual, fine-dining restaurant has been created that will bathe in natural light during the day and bask in the lights of the city at night.
Very little in the way of exhibits has been set up in any of the new large angular spaces that the crystal affords (construction workers were still adding final touches in some of the rooms) but right now the building itself is just as fascinating, if not more (depending on your feelings towards dinosaurs and ancient artifacts) as any of the museum’s collections. Walking around, its hard not to wonder not only how the building was constructed at such impossible angles, but how the interior was designed — it’s possible to view the floors below from various areas in the upper levels, magnificent skylights framed by angular white walls light the museum’s grand new entrance and you can walk among the structural beams (now dry-walled and painted white) that hold the whole structure together.
Some of my favorite things about the building:
-Where the ceiling and walls of the Crystal meet the heritage building. Michael Lee-Chin, who donated $30 million to the project, described it as a quantum leap from the past into the future, which isn’t a bad way to describe what it feels like standing in the Crystal and seeing brickwork from the original ROM building peaking through the walls.
-The views. Dinosaurs will be visible through the windows to pedestrians walking on Bloor Street and from inside, you can look down through an angled window that overhangs the sidewalk on Bloor. The ROM is paying the city $2,400 per year for that view.
-The thin windows that crisscross each other, which will cast unusual rays of light on the exhibits to be installed below. Those babies are going to be bitches to wash.