Toronto Royal Ontario Museum | Daniel Libeskind + HPA

nightstreak said:
There seems to be no movement on the exterior after a rapid build up of work, removing the cladding, cutting away some of the metal, delivering new parts… and then nothing for weeks and weeks.

I imagine work is progressing inside. Is the whole shebang in the renderings, including the lily pad staircase and skylight in the Hyacinth Gloria Chen Crystal Court being revealed all at once or are they doing this in phases?

And is the court keeping the name after all these substantial changes? I recall articles written about how Michael Lee Chen didn’t end up contributing the money he promised. They even took down his picture from the Spirt House — which itself won’t exist after the renovations.
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IIRC, Lee Chen made good after his fortunes rebounded some years after the 2008 recession. His pledge was made in good faith, but apparently was not going to come all at once and was therefore dependent on a continuing strong economy, which ended up being interrupted for some years.

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The treatment of the ceiling of the soon-to-open Junction Triangle Library, as per this shot by @rdaner in The Campbell thread...

xeKwcVVXZU.jpeg


...is how the exterior of the ROM should have been approached per the manufacturer's inability to control the tone of the cladding. That amount of randomization would have obscured their incompetence... but their incompetence extended to their ability to hide it?

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jje1000 said:
Always interesting to see how aggressively this intervention intersects the geometry of Libeskind's design, which itself unapologetically inserted itself into the older wings of the museum.
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Fun to see the steel all exposed like this again. I was in undergrad at Vic when the original Libeskind building went up and recall how crazy this angular presence looked when compared to the even- older Terrace Galleries (which I loved in their own way).

skyrisecities.com

Throwback Thursday: A Look Back at the Royal Ontario Museum Before the Crystal | SkyriseCities

We take a trip down memory lane at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
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Interesting time capsule I stumbled across from way back in 1982. The article describes the then-new terrace galleries and puts the total size of the museum at 700,000 sq ft (roughly 65,000 sq m). Bigger than I thought. Does anyone know the total size of the museum today?

Royal Ontario Museum reopens after massive rebuilding project
The Royal Ontario Museum, more than 65 years Canada's premier showcase for the glories of other ages and cultures, opens Sept. 24 after an exhaustive expansion project that closed it for 21 months and cost at least $55 million.
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It also included a new six-tiered building known as the Terrace Galleries, sided with glass, which will allow the ROM's Ming Tomb on the first floor to be enjoyed by passersby on the key city artery of Bloor Street.
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The renovated ROM when completed will have a floor space of 700,000 square feet with 220,000 square feet in gallery space -- which will make the rectangular-shaped complex the second-largest single museum building in the world, superceded only by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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MisterF said:
Interesting time capsule I stumbled across from way back in 1982. The article describes the then-new terrace galleries and puts the total size of the museum at 700,000 sq ft (roughly 65,000 sq m). Bigger than I thought. Does anyone know the total size of the museum today?

Royal Ontario Museum reopens after massive rebuilding project
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Most articles and citations refer only to exhibition or gallery space.

The most recent claim I see for total size is from this 2014 article in the Globe and Mail:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/art...100-now-the-real-work-begins/article17495517/

The asserted claim is 74000m2 which is 796,000ft2.

AI reports 270,000ft2 of gallery space, but I couldn't quickly verify that.

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The relative size claim seems dubious. I can find several institutions with larger ft2 in North America.
 
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Northern Light said:
Most articles and citations refer only to exhibition or gallery space.

The most recent claim I see for total size is from this 2014 article in the Globe and Mail:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/art...100-now-the-real-work-begins/article17495517/

The asserted claim is 74000m2 which is 796,000ft2.

AI reports 270,000ft2 of gallery space, but I couldn't quickly verify that.

***

The relative size claim seems dubious. I can find several institutions with larger ft2 in North America.
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74,000 m2 sounds reasonable given that the terrace gallery was demolished to make way for the crystal. Thanks for the link. Oddly enough when I Google it the AI says the whole building is 182,000 square feet. Needless to say AI can't be trusted.

Who knows if the second largest claim was ever true. It seems like a daunting task to research that in 1982. But I guess that's what we relied on journalists for back then.
 
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MisterF said:
74,000 m2 sounds reasonable given that the terrace gallery was demolished to make way for the crystal. Thanks for the link. Oddly enough when I Google it the AI says the whole building is 182,000 square feet. Needless to say AI can't be trusted.

Who knows if the second largest claim was ever true. It seems like a daunting task to research that in 1982. But I guess that's what we relied on journalists for back then.
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I can’t imagine that - considering the size of AMNH, Fields, etc.

AoD
 
I haven’t been able to find the timeline for this project. Is the entire thing being done at once, Bloor entrance, new dino gallery, removing the spirit house, lily pad stairway, or are they doing this in phases and reopening the Bloor entrance ahead of the rest of the work?
 
nightstreak said:
I haven’t been able to find the timeline for this project. Is the entire thing being done at once, Bloor entrance, new dino gallery, removing the spirit house, lily pad stairway, or are they doing this in phases and reopening the Bloor entrance ahead of the rest of the work?
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They haven't published a timeline as I believe that they are still fundraising to cover everything in their plans, hoping they find the funds to be able to just keep going until the plans are accomplished. I suppose if they don't find all of the funds within X amount of time, we will hear suddenly that phase one is done and they are looking forward to phase two at a future point.

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interchange42 said:
They haven't published a timeline as I believe that they are still fundraising to cover everything in their plans, hoping they find the funds to be able to just keep going until the plans are accomplished. I suppose if they don't find all of the funds within X amount of time, we will hear suddenly that phase one is done and they are looking forward to phase two at a future point.

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If they have to cut something, I’m underwhelmed by the lily pad stairway. Feels like it doesn’t belong and is poorly executed even in the renderings.

Vertical circulation is a problem but one that can be solved with better finishings in the existing stairwell. They spinned a fire stairway into “The Stair of Wonders” and left it with shuttered heavy fire doors and horrendously bad finishings (already scratched on opening day). Have the doors auto close during a fire alarm but remain open otherwise and completely refinish the stairway and walls, use lighting and sounds and exhibits to make it interesting to go up and down in.
 
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