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Bold Visions: The Architecture of the Royal Ontario Museum soon to be released



The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) offers an intriguing look at its architecture – past and present – in its newest publication Bold Visions: The Architecture of the Royal Ontario Museum. In this visually stunning 200-page book, author Kelvin Browne presents the evolution of the ROM's architecture from the beginning of the 20th century to the June 2007 opening of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. Accompanying the textual study are more 250 historical photos of the Museum and never-before-seen images of the Lee-Chin Crystal in construction by photographer Steven Evans.

"The architecture of museums must serve classic purposes, but should also contribute iridescently to the identity of the cities and societies in which they exist—thus the requirement for bold visions in museum-making, whatever the place or time," noted William Thorsell, ROM Director and CEO in Bold Visions' foreword.

Bold Visions is the ROM's first comprehensive overview of its architectural history. Through this thoughtful study, the author presents the ROM and its neighbours – the University of Toronto colleges and the numerous cultural institutions undergoing architectural transformations in the city – and reveals the long list of factors that have contributed to the Museum's architecture since it first opened its doors in 1914. The book guides the reader from the earliest ROM, the 1914 Philosophers' Walk Wing through the additions that followed in 1933, 1968, and 1984. An eight panel pull-out section illustrates the building's evolution. A substantial component is devoted to the newest addition to Toronto's landscape, the Daniel Libeskind-designed Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, and reveals how Renaissance ROM, the Museum's expansion and renovation project, has restored the logic of the Museum's original Beaux Arts master plan. Bold Visions includes an interview with architect Daniel Libeskind.

Kelvin Browne holds a Master of Architecture Degree from the University of Toronto and began his career working in architecture. He became associated with the Royal Ontario Museum in 1998 as a volunteer. In 2004, he joined the ROM on staff as Managing Director of the Institute for Contemporary Culture and in 2007 was appointed the Museum's Executive Director of Marketing and Commercial Development. He writes frequently about architecture, design and gardening for a variety of publications.

Bold Visions is available in the ROM Museum Store and bookstores across the country as of December 17, 2007 for $44.99 (softcover) and $64.99 (hardcover), plus applicable taxes.
 
Thanks, wylie.

I quoted a few excerpts form Kelvin Browne's book Bold Visions: The Architecture of the ROM at the beginning of this thread in September 2006. Little did I know how long it would take to be published!
 
Hume on ROM Space

Can these old bones make us love new ROM?

Dec 15, 2007 04:30 AM
Christopher Hume

There's nothing new about dinosaurs but the way we think about them.

Gone are the days when we viewed these "terrible lizards" as lumbering giants, barely aware they were alive. Now they have been recast as agile and intelligent, strangely beautiful and very scary.

Nowhere are these new creatures better presented than at the Royal Ontario Museum's Age of Dinosaurs Gallery, which opens today.

Don't go expecting badly painted murals or earnest dioramas; the modern dinosaur has been allowed to speak for itself. Here they are, nothing but bones and attitude, bristling with energy and motion.

Obvious though it may seem, the idea is to keep museological interventions to a minimum, little more than labels and the odd interactive computer. In other words, what you see is what you get. But who could ask for more? Exhibited in glass cases and in conditions of maximum transparency, these are displays that invite visitors to get up close and personal. Every tooth, vertebra and claw stands out in stark contrast to the unrelieved whiteness of the many-angled walls of the new hall.

Speaking of which, the second-storey space can only be described as remarkable; open to the city on the north side and to other floors above and below, it brings dinosaur display quite literally out of the box.

The biggest hall in the ROM's Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, it easily accommodates skeletons as vast as the museum's Barosaurus, the 27-metre long herbivore whose bulk is revealed in spectacular fashion. Even more startling is the Tyrannosaurus rex mounted as if in full flight. It is an awesome sight, the kind that brings out the hidden paleontologist in all of us.

ROM veterans will recognize many of the animals on display – the one-tusked mammoth, for example, can still be seen, along with the duck-billed dinosaurs.

The hall represents another step in a process launched more than a decade ago when New York's Museum of Natural History unveiled a series of pared-down galleries in which content was all. Like the ROM, the context was more a stage than a stage set.

In a sense, this return to the artifact is the subtext to the $400 million remake underway at the ROM. Under its current president and CEO, William Thorsell, the emphasis has shifted from interpretation to presentation. Not to say that analysis isn't provided, but now the ROM has the confidence to allow visitors relatively unmediated access to the collection.

There has been no attempt to make the dinosaurs "fun" in the way one might expect in these impatient times. On the other hand, the lighting, carefully arranged to cast dramatic shadows, and the sheer variety of specimens make the gallery irresistible.

Needless to say, the ROM has a lot riding on the success of its dinosaurs. Museums count on the creatures to draw the crowds they need to keep their coffers full. Given the hostility Daniel Libeskind's Crystal has prompted, the reptiles will have their work cut out for them.

But unlike the past, their future seems promising; to begin with, the hall has more animals on display than ever before and they have never looked better.

Neither has the museum. It will take time, but eventually Torontonians will learn to stop hating and love the new ROM. When the shock of the new wears off, there will be the appeal of the old.
 
I was there last night. I was impressed by the new Barosaurus. It is quite imposing and fills the East gallery from end to end.

Knowing that the T-Rex is a cast kind of took away the magic but I was quickly won over by the smaller dinos with their tiny intricate bone structures.

Stansions were put up all around the new opened gallery to prevent people from getting up close to the windows which was disappointing, but I guess that solves the problem of little kids getting lost in the slitted windows.

Speaking of kids, they were nonetheless trying to climb the more angled walls. Some walls were being used well for mounted fossils.

I got a really good feeling about the crystal as a whole seeing this gallery in place. The place is beginning to mature and come together. The Spirit Room was lit from below, a great effect being achieved for people looking down from the bridge connecting the East and West wings of the new gallery.

The Stair of Wonders is also seemlingly coming together, with the walls getting more colourful with posters and information about the galleries accessible from it.

I look forward to the rest of the galleries opening. I think that once all of them have been opened, all the kinks will have been worked out and the crystal will shine.
 
I meet Alvin at the lecture on Friday during the preview. The curator talked about the history of the ROM's dinosaur collection as it has migrated through the building over the decades. She explained that some of the objects on display are casts - because the Museum uses the original bones for ongoing research purposes. In the Mammals gallery, for instance, the Giant Ground Sloth was excavated by the ROM in Florida but a cast of it is on display. I don't think it lessens the impact very much.

I think the bare-bones, irregularly-shaped, angular galleries and their contents work well together. The light painted walls of the Crystal are an effective backdrop for the organic "architecture" of the darker coloured objects on show. It's good to see so many dinos on display again - when they designed those dioramas back in the 1970's the ROM ended up with fewer items out than they had in the 1960's.

Most of the displays are free standing - only the Ichthyosaurs are mounted on a flat background against one wall - so the unique shapes of the Crystal galleries aren't compromised. One of the sloping walls is also used as a backdrop to mount a large item on.

The Barosaurus is quite something: I noticed it has ball-and-socket joints in the neck vertebrae, so it must've been able to swivel that long neck with great flexibility. There's a cute baby one in front of it. The interactive audio-visuals seemed to be popular with the kids and adults.
 
I went back this afternoon. There are large icycles forming at the Bloor Street end of the building. The biggest are at the edges, and the largest of all is very high up over the entrance, but a lot of smaller icycles are forming in-between the cladding strips too.

The building looks like a huge iceberg. There's so much snow buildup on the roof that many of the individual cladding panels have lost all definition. There are also large snow drifts against the wall near the gift shop entrance, which is closed. When water got in after it rained a while ago it was in the ICC gallery on the 4th floor - you can see the ceiling there is slightly stained.

They've welded together the edges of the catwalk sections that lead into the ICC so it doesn't "juggle".

I also noticed the effect that MetroMan has pointed out: from the bridge across the Spirit House the lights in the basement project shadows of the catwalk and beam structure that's on the main floor up onto the walls and ceiling of the Spirit House.
 
Here are some pics from the Members Preview on Friday:

20071214ROM001.jpg

Entrance of the Age of Dinosaur gallery from the Stair of Wonders.

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"Gordo" the Barosaur.

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Flying turtle.

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Pterosaurs (?).

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Gordo's head...

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...from below.

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Gordo and his "discoverer" - Dr. David Evans.

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Flying fish and turtle.

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Plinth to the Age of Dinosaurs gallery.

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Obligatory T. rex shot.

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Bizzare mammals.

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More mammal fossils.

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Plant and small fossils.

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Looking across the entrance atrium to the dinosaur gallery.

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Age of Mammals - overall view.

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Closeup of the Age of Mammals plinth. Note the pedestal - if the traditional holds, there will be an identifying piece of the collection on it.

20071214ROM017.jpg

Back to the dinos.

AoD
 
Amazing shots, thanks AOD

My only complaint is that the space looks quite sterile. I can't make any real judgments though since I haven't been there myself. Also, imagine that Barosaurus rearing in the main entrance going up 3-4 stories - now that would be striking!
 
ProjectEnd said:
Amazing shots, thanks AOD

My only complaint is that the space looks quite sterile. I can't make any real judgments though since I haven't been there myself. Also, imagine that Barosaurus rearing in the main entrance going up 3-4 stories - now that would be striking!
Click to expand...

I agree. I've always thought that Gordo would look better in the Hyacinth Crystal Court with it's head looking into the dino gallery's "balcony". It sure is tall enough and would provide a striking piece for the court. Right now, Gordo looks kind of constricted where he is.
 
there defintely isn't that vertical expanse that the dino's are crying out for.
 
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