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

internal flow

I admit I only visited the Crystal once and hated the interior so much I never returned, so I may have missed the point about enhanced circular flow among the galleries. However, I do recall the flow at ground level - past the coat check, through the check-in lines, and up the misnamed Stair of Wonders - is confusing and congested. The whole lobby space is dingy and depressing.

And what gives with the Spirit Room?
 
On Sunday I finally watched the short films playing in that small theatre at the north end of the Canada: First Peoples gallery. I especially liked the one about Paul Kane that compared his field sketches of Indian life - honest and accurate depictions of what he encountered on his travels - with the tidied-up, romanticized versions of "noble savages" dressed in all their finery that he produced from them, based on the heroic European style of art then in vogue among collectors.

It rather reminded me of the contrast between Toronto's sensible Modernist approach to building ... versus the allure of faux European historicism and glamorous, imported Big Hair starchitecture. And, with that thought in mind, I considered the possibility that insted of a Crystal we might have built a huge Iroquois log house instead - there's a nice little model of one in that gallery.

Dust bunnies on the loose everywhere in the Crystal, clinging to the walls, tumbling down, whirling around. What to do? What to do?
 
Urban Shocker said:
Dust bunnies on the loose everywhere in the Crystal, clinging to the walls, tumbling down, whirling around. What to do? What to do?
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So, it begins!

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your signature to help him gain world domination.
 
Benc7 said:
So, it begins!

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your signature to help him gain world domination.
Click to expand...

Who'd have thought, maybe the ROM really is the temple of the Dust Bunnie, or is it just an ersatz edifice complex stumbling through a poor hair day. Whasss up, doc ?
 
milanista said:
I really don't understand this widspread criticism of the ROM's crystal. When I first heard about it back in the day I assumed there would be a few detractors but of course there always is. I had no idea that so many people seem to despise it.

It makes the ROM 5x better in my opinion. Anyone remember what used to be there? No? Because it was that forgettable (I do, unfortunately, but only because I walked by it almost daily during university). .....
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I don't believe you have eyes to see. Are you trying to tell me that when you look at the side of the ROM that faces Queens Park Crescent, you don't see a beautiful old building? You must be joking.

There was a cobblestone sidewalk and inviting display cases at the northeast corner (outside the museum). Very charming. Very international in its outlook, too. The clumsy part was what stood on the site of the Crystal, and the Crystal is no improvement. I have only visited once --- and I don't like the space use (impossible to make sense of it).

This brings to mind my first post about the ROM. I remember my anger, oh, do I remember. I maintain now, as I did then, that the "renaissance" was in the wrong hands, and when they discovered the original concept was unworkable, the ethical thing would have been to move on to another design/proposal.

But I don't believe this clumsy addition belongs on any "ugliest" list. Perhaps "stupidest" or "worst conceived".

I'd like to laugh about it when I walk by, but I think about the cost of it, close to 300 million.
 
Seriously? I have eyes... and you have (at best) cross-eyes.

TonyV said:
I don't believe you have eyes to see. Are you trying to tell me that when you look at the side of the ROM that faces Queens Park Crescent, you don't see a beautiful old building? You must be joking.

There was a cobblestone sidewalk and inviting display cases at the northeast corner (outside the museum). Very charming. Very international in its outlook, too. The clumsy part was what stood on the site of the Crystal, and the Crystal is no improvement. I have only visited once --- and I don't like the space use (impossible to make sense of it).

This brings to mind my first post about the ROM. I remember my anger, oh, do I remember. I maintain now, as I did then, that the "renaissance" was in the wrong hands, and when they discovered the original concept was unworkable, the ethical thing would have been to move on to another design/proposal.

But I don't believe this clumsy addition belongs on any "ugliest" list. Perhaps "stupidest" or "worst conceived".

I'd like to laugh about it when I walk by, but I think about the cost of it, close to 300 million.
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ROM from QPC still looks the same. Maybe you mean from Avenue Road? And, now that it's not a crowded and crappy entrance, Druxy's, and coat check, the INSIDE of the east wing is a beautiful First Nations exhibit, a reclaimed rotunda, and a (IMHO, underwhelming) historical Canadiana exhibit.

There was not a cobblestone sidewalk -- there was a cracked concrete sidewalk with a strip of cobblestones, two deteriorating lions, and a greasy glass case. Charming? Pshaw.

As for the 'impossible to understand the use of space' yada-yada-yada. I completely understand this argument, if the last time you went to the ROM was during construction. Go back. Try this: Go through the entrance and buy a ticket. Present the ticket to the pleasant man or woman just past the ticket purchase counter.

LOOK AT THE OLD MUSEUM'S BEAUTIFULLY PRESERVED EXTERIOR. It's your first exhibit, orientation, and glimpse of greatness.

Now... do you want to see natural exhibits? Turn left, go up the Stair of (Some) Wonders. See some stuff. Go up another floor. See some more. Go up some more. See some exciting modern Canadiana.

Oh, you wanted to see historical stuff? Instead of turning left, go straight through into the old museum. Turn left, see Canadiana, First Nations or otherwise. Turn right, see Asia. Staying left, go up the staircase (skip the second floor, as the one gallery is still closed and the other is minerals/gems/stuff which will confuse you as it's 'out of place.') On the third, indulge your historical jonez.

Here's the point I'm belabouring. You can hate the outside of the Crystal. You can even hate some of the inside (Poorly fitted drywall. Too much bland white. Institutional fire doors. Whatever.) What you can't do, without driving me personally nuts, and showing yourself to be a hater, is say crap like 'the museum used to be better before they got thousands of artifacts out of storage and renovated most or all of the place.' That's pure, unadulterated, 100%, BS.

Cheers.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
ROM from QPC still looks the same. Maybe you mean from Avenue Road? And, now that it's not a crowded and crappy entrance, Druxy's, and coat check, the INSIDE of the east wing is a beautiful First Nations exhibit, a reclaimed rotunda, and a (IMHO, underwhelming) historical Canadiana exhibit.

There was not a cobblestone sidewalk -- there was a cracked concrete sidewalk with a strip of cobblestones, two deteriorating lions, and a greasy glass case. Charming? Pshaw.

As for the 'impossible to understand the use of space' yada-yada-yada. I completely understand this argument, if the last time you went to the ROM was during construction. Go back. Try this: Go through the entrance and buy a ticket. Present the ticket to the pleasant man or woman just past the ticket purchase counter.

LOOK AT THE OLD MUSEUM'S BEAUTIFULLY PRESERVED EXTERIOR. It's your first exhibit, orientation, and glimpse of greatness.

Now... do you want to see natural exhibits? Turn left, go up the Stair of (Some) Wonders. See some stuff. Go up another floor. See some more. Go up some more. See some exciting modern Canadiana.

Oh, you wanted to see historical stuff? Instead of turning left, go straight through into the old museum. Turn left, see Canadiana, First Nations or otherwise. Turn right, see Asia. Staying left, go up the staircase (skip the second floor, as the one gallery is still closed and the other is minerals/gems/stuff which will confuse you as it's 'out of place.') On the third, indulge your historical jonez.

Here's the point I'm belabouring. You can hate the outside of the Crystal. You can even hate some of the inside (Poorly fitted drywall. Too much bland white. Institutional fire doors. Whatever.) What you can't do, without driving me personally nuts, and showing yourself to be a hater, is say crap like 'the museum used to be better before they got thousands of artifacts out of storage and renovated most or all of the place.' That's pure, unadulterated, 100%, BS.

Cheers.
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I sit corrected -- I did mean from Avenue Road, not QPC. The remainder of your rebuttal hasn't swayed me a bit.

The place needed work, and I have put forward that the wrong hands got hired for the project. I also maintain that there has been a lack of ethics moving forward with this design, it veered so far from its original concept. May I repeat, if a concept was not workable, they should have moved on to another. That's normal life.

Yada, yada, yada, yes the rotunda was crappy and I wouldn't have favoured keeping it in its former state . . . and yada yada yada ....

Good night.
 
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"...honest and accurate depictions of what he encountered on his travels - with the tidied-up, romanticized versions of "noble savages" dressed in all their finery...based on the heroic European style of art then in vogue among collectors.

It rather reminded me of the contrast between Toronto's sensible Modernist approach to building ... versus the allure of faux European historicism and glamorous, imported Big Hair starchitecture."

Back to the discredited argument against all buildings constructed since classical times with classical references. Well the "sensible" modernist look has been circulating for the better part of a century now as well.

But your analogy is false anyway. The noble savage never existed, whereas the building you dislike do.
 
Perception changes with age. The example everyone brings up is the Eiffel Tower. Just because some people don't like it today, doesn't mean it won't be celebrated in the future. Not saying we have an Eiffel Tower in our possession because that would be an unattainable height for any building to reach, but I think with time it'll be viewed in a far more positive light.
 
buildup said:
Back to the discredited argument against all buildings constructed since classical times with classical references. Well the "sensible" modernist look has been circulating for the better part of a century now as well.

But your analogy is false anyway. The noble savage never existed, whereas the building you dislike do.
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The Renaissance was all about mining the antique, and it hasn't been discredited - but we're not in 15th century Florence anymore, Toto.

As imaginative conceits, the white man's invention of the noble savage and marketing culture's promotion of a good taste ghetto wherein Cheddingtonista's dwell both exist. We're at our truest when we avoid such nonsense - as Kane's sketches ... and Casa ... show.
 
I enjoy how this building sits on Bloor Street, but I find the interior cold and mean-spirited. I'm always left with sense that the short man in the slick glasses doodled on his napkin, people exclaimed "genius", and then others were left with the one great concern of being true to his artistic vision. No one trying to make the thing work was given the voice to point out that they have bridges that walk into walls.

If the materials on the exterior are a disappointment, the material on the inside is more so. All that white board, which contrasts against the old stone in a way that leaves it looking, despite its insistent disrespect for the right angle, as unremarkable as a hoarding wall in a mall.

The building may have acquired a flow, but that flow is often incoherent. If a failure to join the wings of the old buildings was an understood flaw of the last reno, wouldn't any firm have given priority to creating new connections? Wouldn't the local designers who successfully renewed institutions that bookend this building have chosen to bridge the old wings, only with traditional forms, prettier materials and at a lower cost?

Some of the awkward spaces:

Was the entrance designed to have a rope cross its grand space, or did no one take the need to control entry into account? There's an unused ticket counter around the corner.

On entry a visitor naturally walks forward, which leads them to... the washrooms. I see many peel off to their left, down a dead end institutional corridor. The way to the new galleries, to the dinosaur exhibits that pull in the families, is over their left shoulder, through those doors that look like they lead to a loading dock.

Go up the Staircase of Wonders, all the way to the top. Oh, you can't get to the top, because that last flight is blocked by a rope and a sign informing the visitor that it is for authorized personnel only. Wonders do cease.

There is a flow through civilizations on the third floor if you pass from the Pacific galleries to the European through the door in the furthermost northeast corner, but the visitor might be likely to avoid this if they had already tried this corner on the second floor and reached a dead end. The more obvious path is through the wasted space occupied by lounge couches at the bottom of the Pacific galleries, across a stairway landing, past an elevator bay, and into the very dark space of the bridge to the European galleries. There's a lot of dead space for visitors crossing this path.

From that bridge on the third floor you can look over the side, down into the unlit cavern between the old and the new, and see how avant-garde space becomes creatively adapted in the real world, how more awkward first floor nook and cranny has been severed from the public with some ropes and a screen and adopted as a storage space leading from the coat check.

Perhaps the incoherence in the flow between galleries is exaggerated by the situation with the older galleries, which are being upgraded slowly, left in a state of transition. Maybe it will be forever a work in progress. The new walls for the Vanity Fair exhibit in the Contemporary Culture gallery converted that space from a caligari inspired warehouse, mostly empty of patrons, to a busy exhibition space, which works quite well for the photographs it is displaying. And the biodiversity gallery is the one area that has designed its displays with an angularity that shows promise for what the new museum could be. Somehow it seems appropriate for this project that the gallery that seems most in fit to the spirit of the new building is in the old building.
 
Well, the same firm - Haley Sharpe - is working with curators to design most of the display cases in the new building and heritage wings - the Chinese galleries also adopt this angular form, as do those in the Crystal of course.

As for how the other shortlisted firms would have handled the flow of visitors between galleries, neither Bing Thom ( with their 'dinosaur jar' at the north end of the west heritage wing ) nor Andrea Bruno ( who proposed demolishing the east-west heritage bridge wing, and not linking the north end of the east heritage wing to the rest of the building ) would have stuck with the simple, 1914 plan for expanding the Museum ... as Libeskind did. So, really, the question "wouldn't any firm have given priority to creating new connections?" must be answered in the negative. Did KPMB submit a design? I don't know.

I think that, as you suggest, once the heritage wing galleries are installed ( that dead end you refer to on the second floor represents one example, as does the vacant space on the third floor east-west bridge wing ) it'll work as intended. And what doesn't work can be fixed, as the newly-installed ramp from the Birdies to the Mammals on the second floor indicates.

That second ticketing area around the corner was used for members last summer and worked quite well, and it's used as a bar during events.
 
Maybe we should regard the Crystal as the flamboyantly flawed entrance to a generally thoughtful ROM galleries' re-alignment, and just leave it at that, for now. In time, and when there is money enough, refinements will have to be considered for the addition. On the bright side, even the hostile reviews of the Crystal addition we see on those " worst " lists carry some positives. It may be negative, but it's advertising nonetheless.
 
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