M
migueltree
Guest
Who is John Galt? A future president of Husky, or a work of fiction contributed to by Ayn Rand?
S
Sir Novelty Fashion
Guest
Actually, he founded Guelph.
3
3Dementia
Guest
Who founded Galt-Preston (aka Cambridge)?
A
adma
Guest
Sean Preston Federline?
S
scarberiankhatru
Guest
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
S
spmarshall
Guest
Hey! John Galt also founded Goderich! It shares with Guelph a radial street system (though more visible in Goderich).
A
adma
Guest
So does Bayfield (in minature).
Ah, yeah. A bunch of message-board-posting web geeks discussing John Galt. So what else is new
Ah, yeah. A bunch of message-board-posting web geeks discussing John Galt. So what else is new
A
adma
Guest
B
building babel
Guest
Gleaned from the lunch:
* The ROM plans to have the building watertight by the end of this month.
* Scaffolding is already up, so hundreds of drywallers can swarm in and get to work as soon as this is accomplished. Some areas have already been strategically enclosed and drywalling begun - the restaurant on level 5, I believe.
* The final cost of the project is now set at about $260 million. $238 million raised so far.
* Looks like the TSO concert on March 3rd in the Crystal will have to be rescheduled.
* When the Crystal opens none of the galleries in it will be open, other than the Weston Exhibition Hall in the basement and the ICC on level 4 .
Curators gave a sneak preview of several recent acquisitions:
* Nine of the cutest little Trilobite specimens you ever did see. They were purchased from Russia specifically for public display at the ROM, and prepared by the Saint-Petersburg Paleontological Laboratory. Hope I look that good when I'm 250 million years old.
* An exquisite Neo-Classical silver epergne made in England by Benjamin Smith and presented to John Beverley Robinson in 1829 upon his appointment as Chief Justice of Upper Canada. It will anchor a display in the Sigmund Samuel Gallery. Also, the doorway to Robinson's house will be on display there.
* Staffordshire figurines from a recent bequest. There will be a decorative arts symposium on May 2,4,5 on crystal and glass, tied to the opening of the Crystal.
I thought the 20th Century Italian Arts and Design exhibition one of the best I've seen there since the Deco show a couple of years ago.
* The ROM plans to have the building watertight by the end of this month.
* Scaffolding is already up, so hundreds of drywallers can swarm in and get to work as soon as this is accomplished. Some areas have already been strategically enclosed and drywalling begun - the restaurant on level 5, I believe.
* The final cost of the project is now set at about $260 million. $238 million raised so far.
* Looks like the TSO concert on March 3rd in the Crystal will have to be rescheduled.
* When the Crystal opens none of the galleries in it will be open, other than the Weston Exhibition Hall in the basement and the ICC on level 4 .
Curators gave a sneak preview of several recent acquisitions:
* Nine of the cutest little Trilobite specimens you ever did see. They were purchased from Russia specifically for public display at the ROM, and prepared by the Saint-Petersburg Paleontological Laboratory. Hope I look that good when I'm 250 million years old.
* An exquisite Neo-Classical silver epergne made in England by Benjamin Smith and presented to John Beverley Robinson in 1829 upon his appointment as Chief Justice of Upper Canada. It will anchor a display in the Sigmund Samuel Gallery. Also, the doorway to Robinson's house will be on display there.
* Staffordshire figurines from a recent bequest. There will be a decorative arts symposium on May 2,4,5 on crystal and glass, tied to the opening of the Crystal.
I thought the 20th Century Italian Arts and Design exhibition one of the best I've seen there since the Deco show a couple of years ago.
A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
Thanks for the update again babel. It does seem the ROM is on an acquisition spree.
AoD
AoD
R
rdaner
Guest
ROM ranking
Just curious as to the rank (on the size chart) the ROM will have when the Crystal is complete. On the same note, how will the AGO rank?
Just curious as to the rank (on the size chart) the ROM will have when the Crystal is complete. On the same note, how will the AGO rank?
B
Bogtrotter
Guest
Re: ROM ranking
How do you found a town?
How do you found a town?
A
adma
Guest
B
building babel
Guest
I was told that part of the reason why the cost of the building has risen is because the ROM used more steel than anticipated. But they had, fortunately, locked in their purchase price before the dramatic rise in steel costs.
A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
From the Globe:
Crystal clouded by delays, glitches
VAL ROSS
The clock is ticking and so is the meter.
Construction at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum is at least six months behind schedule. Exhibitions that were scheduled for still-unfinished spaces are bumping each other like dominoes, forcing hard-pressed curators to perform miracles of nimble adaptation.
The crisis has produced a flurry of lawyers' letters underlining contractual obligations having to do with completion dates.
The upshot: The contractor responsible for the Crystal's revolutionary cladding, Josef Gartner & Co. and its parent, the Permasteelisa Group, are funding a heroic push costing well over $500,000 -- all so that the ROM can open its doors next June 1.
What this frenzy is doing to the place has become apparent in the last two weeks.
Inside the museum, the show Italian Arts & Design: The 20th Century reveals what happens when an exhibition planned for a 14,500-square-foot space under the Crystal has had to be creatively edited and shoehorned into 11,000 square feet on the third floor of the old ROM. The show is spectacular -- but about 50 objects smaller than when it opened at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in May, and much more densely packed.
"It was sad, but it brought a big show into focus," says curator Robert Little, who conducted the triage.
On the museum's exterior, scores of ironworkers from Local 721 are now labouring in two shifts, seven days a week, from cranes and security ropes across the angled faces of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. "Today's a 19-hour day," says foreman Chris Judge, taking a Tim Hortons break across the street from the site. "I haven't seen my family in a month and a half."
Falling behind schedule is normal for a project this complex, says Mike Dix, Local 721's business agent, a veteran of the construction of Toronto's SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre).
Foreman Chris Judge comments, "We've had a few guys walk up to [architect Daniel] Libeskind and say the problem with this building is that it was all designed inside some guy's head."
But Paul Rianieri, a superintendent with Gartner, points out that the Libeskind-designed Denver Art Museum, whose cladding was also installed by Gartner / Permasteelisa, opened a week ahead of schedule.
The ROM is planning a $50,000-a-table gala on June 1 to launch the Crystal, and Libeskind has been invited to attend. Will the Crystal be ready? Thore Garbers, the German project architect from Studio Libeskind, says, "I cross the fingers."
His building may not be complete -- but it will be close, says John Martin, project director with Vanbots Construction, the main construction company.
ROM CEO William Thorsell has made his priorities clear: The Institute for Contemporary Culture on the fourth floor and the Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall, below ground, must be done. The first floor, museum shop and all bathrooms should be ready. And the bar and bistro on Crystal 5, the roof, can expect to welcome guests.
"We're calling it an 'architectural' opening," says the professionally imperturbable Thorsell. "For the first 10 days, much of the new building will remain largely unencumbered by stuff, so people can see its bones." Over the following months, gallery by gallery, the new ROM will be revealed.
It's been in increments, too, that the challenges facing the Crystal project have piled so high. Shortly after the Libeskind design was chosen, the ROM called in RWDI, the Guelph, Ont.-based consulting engineers, to run tests on how the building would work under local weather conditions. "We ran 30 tests for heavy snows and frozen rain," says Thorsell. "We got 30 avalanches."
The unsung hero who solved this challenge, says Thorsell, was project architect Garbers, who back in 2003 dreamed up a two-layer cladding system, water-tight on the bottom, with a grid of anodized aluminum sitting on top. The grid would prevent snow from forming heavy loads, instead dispersing it onto the warmer layer beneath, where it would melt and flow into hidden gutters.
But when the ROM asked for tenders on this complex system, it got "a big shock," admits Garbers. "So expensive!" The lowest bidder, Gartner, was hired to design, build and install the cladding for around $15-million.
The demands of building the Crystal had also forced the structural-steel contractors, Walters Inc. of Hamilton, to invent new systems. As a result, their steel skeleton fell well behind schedule. Each delay affected the next stage. By late fall, 2005, the steel was done, and crews could proceed to put on the first layer of cladding. But while Gartner's panels were works of precision, installing them would take far longer than anyone had reckoned.
On June 6, Vanbots's Martin met with the ROM to discuss whether the Crystal was far enough along for its below-ground exhibition hall to host the Italian show. The meeting ended in the hope that the hall would at least be made watertight.
On June 29, curators finalized their Weston Hall plans. Three weeks later, they were told to rip them up. ROM design director Dave Hollands had just one July weekend to decide if moving the exhibition to a smaller space in the old building would ruin it, or break contracts with the lending institutions. After he determined that a move was possible (but only if opening day could be moved from Oct. 21 to Oct. 28) , curator Little had two weeks to decide which objects to eliminate.
Limited wall space forced him to jettison several large paintings. "But we still had to respect the show's story line and to show interrelationships between paintings and decorative arts," says Little. The old building's north wall was half-exposed, by construction, to outside cold and damp, which could harm fine wooden screens, lecterns and suites of furniture. So Little eliminated some pieces, and had cases built to protect the rest. He renegotiated with each lender about the new plans, and, if objects were bound for storage, had to find out where to send them.
Meanwhile, the construction crews faced another hurdle. Back in the spring, when everyone presumed the Italian show would go into Weston Hall, Vanbots gave notice that the giant tower crane would have to be moved away from the Crystal by July 24. By July, the exhibition was no longer destined for the Crystal -- but the machine, now booked for another job, still had to be disassembled and moved.
"Those three weeks we lost handcuffed us," says Gartner superintendent Paul Ranieri. "And if we still had that crane, our job now would be eight times faster," estimates foreman Chris Judge.
By August, the crane and cladding-installation issues had created a crisis. The ROM board demanded a summit. Permasteelisa / Gartner sent experts to assess the situation. The next phase, drywalling, couldn't begin until the exterior was done, which it clearly was not. The cladding contractor agreed to make good on the cost of a speedup.
This meant doubling the number of installation workers, from 45 in August to 90 by the end of October. At $40 an hour for 12-hour days (not counting those lost to rain), five days a week, plus double time on weekends, that's a weekly payroll of more than $300,000. (Permasteelisa could lose money on this project.)
Yet people are still passionate about the Crystal's ultimate success. Dix of Local 721 says, "It has been a challenge, but one that Local 721 is proud to be a part of."
Garbers, the project architect, says the Crystal is "close to pure geometry. . . . " He adds that the ROM is "probably the best building Daniel has ever built."
Besides, if the curators of the Italian exhibition are haunted by what their show is missing, they've also been able to add some pieces from the ROM's own collections (including some dazzling Bulgari and Buccellati jewellery).
And they know that their show offers proof that future exhibitions will look even more dazzling in the Crystal's new and bigger showcase.
AoD
Crystal clouded by delays, glitches
VAL ROSS
The clock is ticking and so is the meter.
Construction at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum is at least six months behind schedule. Exhibitions that were scheduled for still-unfinished spaces are bumping each other like dominoes, forcing hard-pressed curators to perform miracles of nimble adaptation.
The crisis has produced a flurry of lawyers' letters underlining contractual obligations having to do with completion dates.
The upshot: The contractor responsible for the Crystal's revolutionary cladding, Josef Gartner & Co. and its parent, the Permasteelisa Group, are funding a heroic push costing well over $500,000 -- all so that the ROM can open its doors next June 1.
What this frenzy is doing to the place has become apparent in the last two weeks.
Inside the museum, the show Italian Arts & Design: The 20th Century reveals what happens when an exhibition planned for a 14,500-square-foot space under the Crystal has had to be creatively edited and shoehorned into 11,000 square feet on the third floor of the old ROM. The show is spectacular -- but about 50 objects smaller than when it opened at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in May, and much more densely packed.
"It was sad, but it brought a big show into focus," says curator Robert Little, who conducted the triage.
On the museum's exterior, scores of ironworkers from Local 721 are now labouring in two shifts, seven days a week, from cranes and security ropes across the angled faces of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. "Today's a 19-hour day," says foreman Chris Judge, taking a Tim Hortons break across the street from the site. "I haven't seen my family in a month and a half."
Falling behind schedule is normal for a project this complex, says Mike Dix, Local 721's business agent, a veteran of the construction of Toronto's SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre).
Foreman Chris Judge comments, "We've had a few guys walk up to [architect Daniel] Libeskind and say the problem with this building is that it was all designed inside some guy's head."
But Paul Rianieri, a superintendent with Gartner, points out that the Libeskind-designed Denver Art Museum, whose cladding was also installed by Gartner / Permasteelisa, opened a week ahead of schedule.
The ROM is planning a $50,000-a-table gala on June 1 to launch the Crystal, and Libeskind has been invited to attend. Will the Crystal be ready? Thore Garbers, the German project architect from Studio Libeskind, says, "I cross the fingers."
His building may not be complete -- but it will be close, says John Martin, project director with Vanbots Construction, the main construction company.
ROM CEO William Thorsell has made his priorities clear: The Institute for Contemporary Culture on the fourth floor and the Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall, below ground, must be done. The first floor, museum shop and all bathrooms should be ready. And the bar and bistro on Crystal 5, the roof, can expect to welcome guests.
"We're calling it an 'architectural' opening," says the professionally imperturbable Thorsell. "For the first 10 days, much of the new building will remain largely unencumbered by stuff, so people can see its bones." Over the following months, gallery by gallery, the new ROM will be revealed.
It's been in increments, too, that the challenges facing the Crystal project have piled so high. Shortly after the Libeskind design was chosen, the ROM called in RWDI, the Guelph, Ont.-based consulting engineers, to run tests on how the building would work under local weather conditions. "We ran 30 tests for heavy snows and frozen rain," says Thorsell. "We got 30 avalanches."
The unsung hero who solved this challenge, says Thorsell, was project architect Garbers, who back in 2003 dreamed up a two-layer cladding system, water-tight on the bottom, with a grid of anodized aluminum sitting on top. The grid would prevent snow from forming heavy loads, instead dispersing it onto the warmer layer beneath, where it would melt and flow into hidden gutters.
But when the ROM asked for tenders on this complex system, it got "a big shock," admits Garbers. "So expensive!" The lowest bidder, Gartner, was hired to design, build and install the cladding for around $15-million.
The demands of building the Crystal had also forced the structural-steel contractors, Walters Inc. of Hamilton, to invent new systems. As a result, their steel skeleton fell well behind schedule. Each delay affected the next stage. By late fall, 2005, the steel was done, and crews could proceed to put on the first layer of cladding. But while Gartner's panels were works of precision, installing them would take far longer than anyone had reckoned.
On June 6, Vanbots's Martin met with the ROM to discuss whether the Crystal was far enough along for its below-ground exhibition hall to host the Italian show. The meeting ended in the hope that the hall would at least be made watertight.
On June 29, curators finalized their Weston Hall plans. Three weeks later, they were told to rip them up. ROM design director Dave Hollands had just one July weekend to decide if moving the exhibition to a smaller space in the old building would ruin it, or break contracts with the lending institutions. After he determined that a move was possible (but only if opening day could be moved from Oct. 21 to Oct. 28) , curator Little had two weeks to decide which objects to eliminate.
Limited wall space forced him to jettison several large paintings. "But we still had to respect the show's story line and to show interrelationships between paintings and decorative arts," says Little. The old building's north wall was half-exposed, by construction, to outside cold and damp, which could harm fine wooden screens, lecterns and suites of furniture. So Little eliminated some pieces, and had cases built to protect the rest. He renegotiated with each lender about the new plans, and, if objects were bound for storage, had to find out where to send them.
Meanwhile, the construction crews faced another hurdle. Back in the spring, when everyone presumed the Italian show would go into Weston Hall, Vanbots gave notice that the giant tower crane would have to be moved away from the Crystal by July 24. By July, the exhibition was no longer destined for the Crystal -- but the machine, now booked for another job, still had to be disassembled and moved.
"Those three weeks we lost handcuffed us," says Gartner superintendent Paul Ranieri. "And if we still had that crane, our job now would be eight times faster," estimates foreman Chris Judge.
By August, the crane and cladding-installation issues had created a crisis. The ROM board demanded a summit. Permasteelisa / Gartner sent experts to assess the situation. The next phase, drywalling, couldn't begin until the exterior was done, which it clearly was not. The cladding contractor agreed to make good on the cost of a speedup.
This meant doubling the number of installation workers, from 45 in August to 90 by the end of October. At $40 an hour for 12-hour days (not counting those lost to rain), five days a week, plus double time on weekends, that's a weekly payroll of more than $300,000. (Permasteelisa could lose money on this project.)
Yet people are still passionate about the Crystal's ultimate success. Dix of Local 721 says, "It has been a challenge, but one that Local 721 is proud to be a part of."
Garbers, the project architect, says the Crystal is "close to pure geometry. . . . " He adds that the ROM is "probably the best building Daniel has ever built."
Besides, if the curators of the Italian exhibition are haunted by what their show is missing, they've also been able to add some pieces from the ROM's own collections (including some dazzling Bulgari and Buccellati jewellery).
And they know that their show offers proof that future exhibitions will look even more dazzling in the Crystal's new and bigger showcase.
AoD