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

I was pretty excited to hear about the planned improvements, especially:

> The establishment of a cafe/ of some sort on Bloor near Philosopher's Walk.
I've long felt that the area immediately to the east of the entry gates just begs for a better at-grade experience. If they do it right, you could have a really nice cafe/public square-type seating area. The recent update of the public realm in front of the Met in NYC was nicely done. I hope an upgrade of portions of Philosopher's Walk is in the cards, too.

> Fixing the entrance area inside the crystal.
I remember visiting for the first time after they unveiled the crystal and thinking I had either entered the wrong entrance or that the area was still unfinished. It's just a terrible, confusing, dark, and uninspiring entrance for what is a fairly grand and striking structure (facade issues aside) just outside. I hope they manage to better integrate the entrance, queuing area, and ticket checking booth this time around.

> Doing something—anything—to replace the c5 restaurant.
That always felt doomed from the start because it was such a mission to get to; signage was terrible, you had to find the correct elevator, walk-ups were literally impossible, etc. That space features some wonderful views of the skyline, and let's have it not be a four dollar sign restaurant that no one frequents.

I was also confused, as others were on this thread, by the mention of redoing the side entrance that's currently only used for private events. I'm skeptical that they'd opt for two completely separate entrances if they're spending money on redoing the crystal-located main entrance, but it seems like a bit of a waste to spend a bunch of money redoing an entrance that's used only for events. We shall see.
 
C5 was not only done in by confusing access, but by its own name. It's a trick naming restaurants, the trick being to make the restaurant sound appealing, and there's nothing remotely appealing about a letter and a numeral. The place itself looked very cool, had great views, had the garden on the roof, and an interesting menu. Solving the access issues and finding an appealing name could make the space work for a talented chef again.

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Yeah, don't disagree with that, and did not know in fact that there was a rooftop garden there (despite having eaten at the restaurant a couple times). i think the access issues would take a real inspiring effort to solve, though. Will be interesting to see what's done.

Trying now to think of design inspirations for Bloor St. cafe...

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That second one isn't that far off of what the HPA drawings show. We won't quite be able to match the romance of the top pic though.

Meanwhile, unless those are your pics, you need to show the sources for them!

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interchange42 said:
That second one isn't that far off of what the HPA drawings show. We won't quite be able to match the romance of the top pic though.

Meanwhile, unless those are your pics, you need to show the sources for them!

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Click to expand...

Oh, thanks—I'd wrongly assumed they were hyperlinking to the Google Image search, but clearly they're not.
 
Oh, interesting, awesome, and thanks. Cormier has done some super nice stuff and those plans look pretty good. I hope that greenery to the west of the crystal stays a part of the plan (and, for that matter, the greenery on both the west and east sides of the building, too).

Also, hello T-Rex.

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from http://www.claudecormier.com/en/projet/musee-royal-de-lontario-rom-2/
 

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Here's a close-up from an early HPA drawing from 2 years ago showing plantings at ground level, new streets trees, and tables.

ROMPlazaResto1280.jpg


You can find the full-size rendering in the dataBase file linked at the top of the page.

We had a front page story on this a couple years ago now too, here.

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They need to do something about signage. The largest sign, free-standing outside the entrance, says "Michael Lee-Chin Crystal". I get that he donated money and wants recognition, but... One would think that the name/purpose of the entire structure would be most important. How are randoms and tourists supposed to easily figure out that this is the museum? From the tiny lettering above the front door?
 
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AlvinofDiaspar said:
And yes, the metal slats aren't "cheap" - they're from Josef Gartner, though the material could certainly be more exotic than aluminium.
Click to expand...

That's it. I knew it was German. Whatever reputation Josef Gartner has, he blew it on the ROM. Plain and simple. Thorsell didn't admit it publicly but it was clear that these mismatched shades weren't what was intended. I was a member at the time and at one point, he said that the slats would weather and even out over time. They didn't. I remember that some slats were taken off and replaced with others of a different shade but then they just gave up trying to match them.

I hope that they address that in this Renaissance ROM 1.1 update.

AlvinofDiaspar said:
(and those doors - how about some fire-rated glass ones that communicates to vistors "use me" instead of steel fire doors that slams?) with nothing much wonderful, and the flooring of the galleries screams cheap (a nice blonde maple could rectify that - or go luxe with limestone or dark slate).

AoD
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Totally agree. The doors boggled my mind. They were what made me finally concede that this project was full of shortcomings and it wasn't going to be the architectural jewel that I had been expecting it to be. Those doors look like they lead to a fire escape and your arrival into the unadorned stairwell confirmed it. I would often stand in the court watching people be directed to the doors, presumedly after asking how to go upstairs, and watch them hesitate as if "hmmm, this doesn't look right". Weeks later, they installed fire alarm triggered magnetic latches so the doors were kept open but this didn't change the fire escape experience of circulating through different floors in that stairwell.
 
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