PAN AM GAMES
• Search on for CEO of Toronto’s Pan Am Games [ Globe & Mail ]
• Pan Am chairman takes reins [ Toronto Star ]
• We’ll move swiftly: games chief [ National Post ]
NEIGHBOURHOODS
• Word gets out on Roncesvalles [ Toronto Star ]
• Grinding out their own niche [ Toronto Star ]
• Pizza parlour allowed to reopen [ Globe & Mail ]
OTHER NEWS
• Investigation into scaffold collapse to go on for ‘awhile’[ Toronto Sun ]
• ‘It’s a miracle’ man survived deadly plunge [ Toronto Star ]
• Sorry, we’re closed: Businesses that gave up the ghost in 2009 [ Toronto Star ]
• Keeping Toronto’s past alive [ Toronto Star ]
• The Crystal brawl [ Toronto Sun ]
3 comments
Thought I’d share this story about the closing of McNally Robinson in the recently re-done Shops at Don Mills. I’m not sure what this indicates about the success of the Shops, but it doesn’t bode well.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/743686–mcnally-robinson-closes-don-mills-store?bn=1
It’s kind of fun watching the Sun play hot-or-not with the ROM expansion. How many articles are they going to squeeze out of this?
Personally, I like the structure but I do have a problem with Libeskind being so blatantly repetitive. Yes, Alsop sticks everything on pilotes, Gehry is fond of metallic twists, Calatrava loves white steel — everyone has their signature gimmick. But Libeskind is really pushing it by using near-identical forms on a couple art museums, a Vegas shopping mall and a host of Holocaust memorials and then claiming that each is a specific response to the context. Really? Is that why one is called “The Crystal” and the other is called “The Crystals”? Are those diagonal slashes symbolizing “memory and loss”, or “engagement with the city”, or a great deal at Prada? Which is it, Daniel, because I rather doubt it is all three!
ROM would be a lot stronger as an architectural landmark if it stood alone. If the Sydney Opera House clamshells showed up on everything from office buildings to a Sears store the public might think less of it too.
I happened to see the same travelling exhibition (Vanity Fair Portraits) at both LACMA and the ROM and the experience gave me the last nail in the Crystal’s coffin: the museum-going experience is substantially poorer in Libeskind’s building.
In LA, the exhibition was shown in three traditional rectangular rooms, with the art arranged chronologically on the outside walls and ample skylit breathing space in the middle of the room. Here, in the Institute for Contemporary Culture space, the outer walls can’t be used because they’re too slanted; instead, a maze of inner walls is built to hold the art. Not only does this waste valuable floor space, but the flow becomes impossible to follow. I heard some complaining of dizziness after navigating the angled room for an hour or two. There was a dramatic shortage of seating space in the ICC, and the upper windows had been blacked out due to an inability to control the light. While it was still possible to appreciate each photo, the overall sense of the collection got lost in the overwrought and cluttered space.
If Libeskind had wanted to put a Crystal-shaped sculpture in a park somewhere, I’d have no complaints. But we’d never spend $250 million on a single piece of public art; for that money it needs to serve the museum’s mandate. I agree entirely with the Post: it’s a spectacular failure.