ganjavih
Senior Member
Looks like he liked the mismatched cladding so much that he's using it in Vegas now!
MetroMan
Senior Member
He's a smart man. The ROM did require quite an effort to design the engineering necessary to hold up such a building. He can now take that effort, put it on a shelf and sell it to the mass market.
Dan416
Senior Member
If it's mass-market, then maybe we could a second one that's non-museum so it could have more glass.
MetroMan
Senior Member
^ That's my hope for the south wing. It's occupied by curatorial offices , other administrative purposes and a learning centre on the main floor.
A future phase of Renaissance ROM could (and should) include a Libeskind crystal as initially intended. This one could have a larger percentage of glass because it isn't used as gallery space.
Alternatively, a new crystal can be built here with gallery space in the core area of the first few floors and the perimeter occupied by the curatorial offices. The core wouldn't be exposed to light, the perimeter would.
A future phase of Renaissance ROM could (and should) include a Libeskind crystal as initially intended. This one could have a larger percentage of glass because it isn't used as gallery space.
Alternatively, a new crystal can be built here with gallery space in the core area of the first few floors and the perimeter occupied by the curatorial offices. The core wouldn't be exposed to light, the perimeter would.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
If they move the offices out of the south west corner of the 1914 wing, they can link up the south end of the building on all three floors, in the next phase of development. That's essentially what the Crystal does - it's a linking wing joining the north ends of the building. The original 1914 plan called for the north and south ends of the building to be joined in this way. I hope they stay the course.
MetroMan
Senior Member
US, do you know what percentage of the ROM's collection remains in vaults now that the Crystal allegedly reduced that percentage?
My question exactly is: could the ROM use more gallery space and would it have the resources to manage yet another increase in museum space?
If so, I hope that once the current crystal has been polished up – and the shortcoming corrected – and once the historical wings have all been restored as per plan, that Thorsell takes the momentum that the ROM has going and announces a new phase to do just what we talked about: a South Crystal wing that completes the loop on all three floors and adds office and learning space on floors above that.
To finance this, the ROM would again need to dip into fundraising. Does Toronto have any large donors waiting for an opportunity for philanthropy similar to what Michael Lee Chin gave for the first phase?
My question exactly is: could the ROM use more gallery space and would it have the resources to manage yet another increase in museum space?
If so, I hope that once the current crystal has been polished up – and the shortcoming corrected – and once the historical wings have all been restored as per plan, that Thorsell takes the momentum that the ROM has going and announces a new phase to do just what we talked about: a South Crystal wing that completes the loop on all three floors and adds office and learning space on floors above that.
To finance this, the ROM would again need to dip into fundraising. Does Toronto have any large donors waiting for an opportunity for philanthropy similar to what Michael Lee Chin gave for the first phase?
urbandreamer
recession proof
A Crystal hotel would do the deed.
As would urbandreamer, as long as I got to pay for the destruction of the crystal.
As would urbandreamer, as long as I got to pay for the destruction of the crystal.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
I believe the ROM has at least 90% of their collection in storage - it's a research institution as much as a museum after all. The talks they give at the annual Colloquium, and when new galleries open, are a window into how much research and conservation they continue to do. Newer musums, like the Gardiner, have a much higher proportion of their collection on display - but they're acquiring new things all the time as well.
I wonder when the new proposals for redeveloping the south end of the site will be released?
I wonder when the new proposals for redeveloping the south end of the site will be released?
S
spaced
Guest
Crystal blurs ROM's natural wonders
I maintain hope that one day it might again be a place for childlike wonderment
July 05, 2008
Christopher Dewdney
Special to the Star
Among my happiest childhood memories are the hours I spent wandering through the Royal Ontario Museum. It was there that I indulged two of my favourite passions: travelling into prehistory (using fossils as time machines) and visually feasting on the fabulous shapes of tropical insects.
Even though I lived in London, Ont., I was able to visit the museum several times a year because my father was an associate of the archaeology department and he often took me along. During the two-hour drive to Toronto, I planned the order in which I'd visit the displays. My reveries were so intense that landscape we drove through – the woodlots and cornfields and service centres – seemed to transform into museum dioramas the closer we got to Toronto.
By the time we reached Milton, the limestone cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment had become ancient gates; beyond them the distant panorama of the city skyline was submerged under a fossil ocean.
The first sight of the museum always stunned me. The size of it! And its grand entrance.
In the archway over the doors were limestone carvings of winged dinosaurs and dimetrodons. I could hardly believe that adults had bothered to carve the things I adored, out of the stone I loved – its very substance brimming with fossils. The museum was a natural history shrine that contained everything wondrous for me.
Within its neo-classical walls were woolly mammoths, trilobites, giant butterflies and a gift shop where I could buy accurately modelled dinosaurs and real, iridescent scarab beetles.
Once we were inside, under the gold dome of the rotunda, my father and I parted ways. He headed downstairs to the archaeology department while I raced up the stone stairwell to the second floor and my holy of holies, the Invertebrate Paleontolgy Gallery.
There I would pore over dozens of display cases containing perfect fossils: limestone slabs embedded with glistening black trilobites that looked as if they might dart away at any moment; ornate fossil shells as detailed and fragile as any that wash up on South Pacific beaches. It was time travel.
I imagined the ancient lagoons that held these strange creatures, and the quiet, high-ceilinged gallery seemed to fill with the vapour of time immemorial.
After lingering in the Paleozoic era, I would travel millions of years forward in time, to the present, by heading down the hallway to my other sanctum: the insect display gallery. Here were hundreds of extraordinary beetles and giant tropical insects – some glistening like jewels, others glowing with metallic lustres or brilliant, exotic colours. I fantasized coming upon them on the buttressed trunks of giant hardwoods in the shadowy depths of the rain forest.
And so it went, visit after visit, year after year, until one day I ran up the stairs and the door to the Invertebrate Gallery was covered over with plywood. What a disappointment. I went down the hall. At least the insect gallery was still there. But a few years later that gallery closed as well. Posted signs promised that both galleries would reopen with brand new displays. And they did. Sort of.
When I entered the refurbished Paleontology gallery for the first time I felt betrayed. Instead of the high ceilings of the original there was a winding, low corridor with sounds and buttons and little windows, behind which you could look into tiny dioramas. Ninety per cent of the fossils were gone, replaced with examples. Certainly, you could touch the giant ammonoid at the beginning of the "time walk," but so many others of my favourite specimens were gone.
Marshall Mcluhan was a great communication theorist, but he had a pernicious effect on educational institutions, most particularly on the ROM.
The new invertebrate gallery was meant to educate and engage museum visitors by giving them multi-sensory stimuli á la McLuhan – tactile, audio, visual. Perhaps the display might encourage interest in a few museumgoers, but the information and spectacle of hundreds of specimens was replaced by a pathetic handful of representatives. It was a tremendous loss of information. The shoreline of wonder had been reduced to a few buttons and tape-loops. Ultimately, even this diminished display was closed. And the insect gallery never reopened.
The dinosaur gallery remained the same for a while longer, but even it finally succumbed. In its new incarnation, in the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, it has none of the ambient reconstructions of the plants and landscapes of the Cretaceous period. Instead, the skeletons are displayed like art, amidst the austerity of oblique architecture. In some respects, the Crystal was the end of the museum, at least for me – the final submission of my temple to the gods of modernity, a paralyzing affliction on a friend's body.
The original museum is now called the "heritage building," like some quaint, antique cottage. But its Romanesque arches and running cornices still, at least to my eye, surpass the parasitic Crystal. Architecturally, the street view of the Crystal is bolder than its design can sustain. The exterior cladding is almost naïve, with its decorative modernist rectangles and panels. And its interior is plagued by null zones, dead-end walkways and unusable space.
Yet there is hope, the clock can be turned back. Every brick and window of the original museum that was displaced by the Crystal has been numbered, labelled and stored. Perhaps one day the disciplines that rule the museum – organization, attention to detail and scientific methodology – might resurrect the old building intact. I have asked myself if, despite my quibbles, I could envisage a world without the ROM? No.
My reservations are trumped by the mere survival of the museum and its principles, two of which are at the core of what it means to be human: curiosity about the world around us, and reverence for nature.
Time is a gardener. She tends her sands, and they bloom with ancient civilizations, prehistoric creatures and geological history. At the Royal Ontario Museum, I continue to stroll through the gardens of time. There, deep in the recesses of the heritage building, a slab of limestone embossed with glossy, black trilobites still shines with wonder and mystery.
Christopher Dewdney is the author of Soul of the World: Unlocking the Secrets of Time, published this spring by HarperCollins.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/454745
I maintain hope that one day it might again be a place for childlike wonderment
July 05, 2008
Christopher Dewdney
Special to the Star
Among my happiest childhood memories are the hours I spent wandering through the Royal Ontario Museum. It was there that I indulged two of my favourite passions: travelling into prehistory (using fossils as time machines) and visually feasting on the fabulous shapes of tropical insects.
Even though I lived in London, Ont., I was able to visit the museum several times a year because my father was an associate of the archaeology department and he often took me along. During the two-hour drive to Toronto, I planned the order in which I'd visit the displays. My reveries were so intense that landscape we drove through – the woodlots and cornfields and service centres – seemed to transform into museum dioramas the closer we got to Toronto.
By the time we reached Milton, the limestone cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment had become ancient gates; beyond them the distant panorama of the city skyline was submerged under a fossil ocean.
The first sight of the museum always stunned me. The size of it! And its grand entrance.
In the archway over the doors were limestone carvings of winged dinosaurs and dimetrodons. I could hardly believe that adults had bothered to carve the things I adored, out of the stone I loved – its very substance brimming with fossils. The museum was a natural history shrine that contained everything wondrous for me.
Within its neo-classical walls were woolly mammoths, trilobites, giant butterflies and a gift shop where I could buy accurately modelled dinosaurs and real, iridescent scarab beetles.
Once we were inside, under the gold dome of the rotunda, my father and I parted ways. He headed downstairs to the archaeology department while I raced up the stone stairwell to the second floor and my holy of holies, the Invertebrate Paleontolgy Gallery.
There I would pore over dozens of display cases containing perfect fossils: limestone slabs embedded with glistening black trilobites that looked as if they might dart away at any moment; ornate fossil shells as detailed and fragile as any that wash up on South Pacific beaches. It was time travel.
I imagined the ancient lagoons that held these strange creatures, and the quiet, high-ceilinged gallery seemed to fill with the vapour of time immemorial.
After lingering in the Paleozoic era, I would travel millions of years forward in time, to the present, by heading down the hallway to my other sanctum: the insect display gallery. Here were hundreds of extraordinary beetles and giant tropical insects – some glistening like jewels, others glowing with metallic lustres or brilliant, exotic colours. I fantasized coming upon them on the buttressed trunks of giant hardwoods in the shadowy depths of the rain forest.
And so it went, visit after visit, year after year, until one day I ran up the stairs and the door to the Invertebrate Gallery was covered over with plywood. What a disappointment. I went down the hall. At least the insect gallery was still there. But a few years later that gallery closed as well. Posted signs promised that both galleries would reopen with brand new displays. And they did. Sort of.
When I entered the refurbished Paleontology gallery for the first time I felt betrayed. Instead of the high ceilings of the original there was a winding, low corridor with sounds and buttons and little windows, behind which you could look into tiny dioramas. Ninety per cent of the fossils were gone, replaced with examples. Certainly, you could touch the giant ammonoid at the beginning of the "time walk," but so many others of my favourite specimens were gone.
Marshall Mcluhan was a great communication theorist, but he had a pernicious effect on educational institutions, most particularly on the ROM.
The new invertebrate gallery was meant to educate and engage museum visitors by giving them multi-sensory stimuli á la McLuhan – tactile, audio, visual. Perhaps the display might encourage interest in a few museumgoers, but the information and spectacle of hundreds of specimens was replaced by a pathetic handful of representatives. It was a tremendous loss of information. The shoreline of wonder had been reduced to a few buttons and tape-loops. Ultimately, even this diminished display was closed. And the insect gallery never reopened.
The dinosaur gallery remained the same for a while longer, but even it finally succumbed. In its new incarnation, in the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, it has none of the ambient reconstructions of the plants and landscapes of the Cretaceous period. Instead, the skeletons are displayed like art, amidst the austerity of oblique architecture. In some respects, the Crystal was the end of the museum, at least for me – the final submission of my temple to the gods of modernity, a paralyzing affliction on a friend's body.
The original museum is now called the "heritage building," like some quaint, antique cottage. But its Romanesque arches and running cornices still, at least to my eye, surpass the parasitic Crystal. Architecturally, the street view of the Crystal is bolder than its design can sustain. The exterior cladding is almost naïve, with its decorative modernist rectangles and panels. And its interior is plagued by null zones, dead-end walkways and unusable space.
Yet there is hope, the clock can be turned back. Every brick and window of the original museum that was displaced by the Crystal has been numbered, labelled and stored. Perhaps one day the disciplines that rule the museum – organization, attention to detail and scientific methodology – might resurrect the old building intact. I have asked myself if, despite my quibbles, I could envisage a world without the ROM? No.
My reservations are trumped by the mere survival of the museum and its principles, two of which are at the core of what it means to be human: curiosity about the world around us, and reverence for nature.
Time is a gardener. She tends her sands, and they bloom with ancient civilizations, prehistoric creatures and geological history. At the Royal Ontario Museum, I continue to stroll through the gardens of time. There, deep in the recesses of the heritage building, a slab of limestone embossed with glossy, black trilobites still shines with wonder and mystery.
Christopher Dewdney is the author of Soul of the World: Unlocking the Secrets of Time, published this spring by HarperCollins.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/454745
adma
Superstar
I wonder if there's room in the Crystal for this
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Dewdney's article is quite odd. The idea that, "Every brick and window of the original museum that was displaced by the Crystal has been numbered, labelled and stored" is especially strange, since all of the heritage buildings are intact and have been - or are in the process of being - restored to their original state. And there are considerably more dinosaur and mammal fossil skeletons on display than pre-renovation. About a year ago the Museum, which is constantly expanding the collections, purchased a collection of trilobites for display in the new galleries.
MetroMan
Senior Member
What I'd like to know is what happened to the much hyped Libeskind chandelier that was supposed to go in the stair of wonders?
4grand
Active Member
It's not in the Stair of Wonders. It's in a back stairwell that leads to/from the very top floor of the new addition. It's really quite something.
MetroMan
Senior Member
In a backstair? Strange place to put it.. I'll have to look for it when I go by soon.
...in a back stair that leads to C5, so not that back a stair.
42
42