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Work has begun on the latest transformation of the Royal Ontario Museum — or ROM — at Bloor and Queen's Park in Downtown Toronto. Dubbed OpenROM, the $130 million project will entirely rework the Bloor Street entrance to the museum, add new exhibit space, add more light to the interior atrium, and improve flow between floors and galleries. UrbanToronto reported on the plans at the time of the announcement in February, but now that work has begun behind the recently installed hoarding, it's time for another look.
The Libeskind-designed Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, the most recent renovation and expansion of the ROM, opened on June 1, 2007, and has been a controversial one. Loathed and derided by some, admired by others, the $270 M dollar expansion created significant new gallery space for the museum's extensive and renowned collections, and provided the museum with a signature, Deconstructivist-style modern face on Bloor that complements and contrasts with both the 1914-opened Neo-Romanesque West Wing facing Philosopher's Walk, and the 1933-opening Beaux Arts East Wing facing Queen's Park.
The designer of this latest round of updates to the museum is renowned Canadian architect Siamak Hariri of Hariri Pontarini Architects. With his team, and in collaboration with Director and CEO of the ROM Josh Basseches and his team, and with a foundational philanthropic gift of $50 M to the $130 M project from the Hennick Family, designs have been created and the work has begun. Recently, architectural plans for the renovations were posted on the City of Toronto's website.
The OpenROM plan is meant to correct what have been identified as a few deficiencies in the Libeskind-designed Crystal, while respecting Libeskind's bold strokes. The most obvious of the changes will be to the entrance from Bloor Street (above), which was hard to find and felt inadequate for a building of this stature. By raising the entrance through broad new steps and a gentle ramp rising from the Bloor Street sidewalk, the currently sloping floor inside the Crystal can be made level. Inside, space taken up by the "Spirit House" — an angular, soaring space within the Crystal that never truly connected with any museum-goers' spirit — will be repurposed, its upper levels converted into new floor space to increase exhibit areas, and more light will pour into the centre of the building through a significantly expanded skylight.
The area involved in the first phase of the renovation is outlined in red in the image above. A second phase, to be the subject of the next submission to the City, will move south into the atrium area where a new lily-pad inspired staircase will be added, and a full skylight will replace the ceiling. In the first phase, the entry area itself is addressed, adding the canopy and Bloor steps and ramp, along with a water feature that wraps around the Bloor/Queen's Park corner, softening the city sounds and space with fountains.
Below, elevation drawings detail where the canopy will be inserted into the Crystal, along with new ground level-glazing that will allow views into the entrance area — to be enhanced with works from the ROM's collections — that tell more of the story of what experiences await potential visitors to the galleries.
Inside, with the current sloping floor made level, a rearrangement of the interior will create a more welcoming entrance. While select examples of the museum's collections will be featured atop island displays, cloakroom facilities will be moved to the east side of the space. A bit further in to the west, the former Spirit House area will become the museum's new front desk area, where automated kiosks will also speed entry to the exhibits.
Above the entry area, an oculus will be carved into the dinosaur galleries, introducing another specimen from the collections — a pterosaur soaring above the expanded space.
On the second level, space in the dinosaur gallery lost to the oculus will be regained through a new floor in the space formerly taken up by the Spirit House. At the same time, much of the wall between the dinosaur galleries and the atrium will be removed, bringing much more natural light into the space. While light is the enemy of some more delicate artefacts within the ROM, dinosaur skeletons are not among those where caution will be needed.
Along with the newly, fully-skylit atrium, the space will gain a dramatic new staircase designed to better connect the varying floor heights of the ROM's galleries, built at different levels over successive additions. The staircase, while designed to provide great views through the dramatic space, will also bring ramps that will allow strollers and wheelchairs to avoid the long detours currently required when navigating the staggered levels.
For the time being while all of these improvements get underway, the Bloor Street doors to the ROM are now closed, and the Weston Entrance into the Rotunda along Queen's Park is being used as the building's main entrance again. The work is expected to take three years to complete. A companion story — including a fly-through video of the changes — looks at Siamak Hariri's vision behind the changes, now taking place.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database files, linked below. If you'd like, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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| Related Companies: | B+H Architects, CCxA, Hariri Pontarini Architects, LRI Engineering Inc. |
