I think this is what he's referring to. It's not a great handoff from one panel to another. TBH, I'm surprised the people making the panels didn't notice this, as @haltcatchfire pointed out, it's obvious in the original mock-ups.
- Thread starter MichaelS
- Start date
Kōsō
Active Member
From the 56th floor of the Brookfield tower
FCC1982
Active Member
^ 56th floor - Nice!
^^Thanks for the visual explanation Surreal.
I still think it’s going to look damn nice.
I just hope they can keep the new panels
clean & white.
^^Thanks for the visual explanation Surreal.
I still think it’s going to look damn nice.
I just hope they can keep the new panels
clean & white.
ByeByeBaby
Active Member
I have a big update to come, but here's a teaser:
ByeByeBaby
Active Member
Had a chance as part of Avenue Magazine's Future of the City festival to do a site tour of the Glenbow on Wednesday, which was super cool. Led by Nicholas Bell, the Glenbow's President/CEO, (he's the bowtie guy) it was really interesting to see the progress and hear about the plans up close and personal. Any misstatements are my own here.
We started in the iconic main atrium. I think part of this vertical space will remain. The area that is now the auditorium will become partially the museum store, with a restaurant towards the corner where the store is now. Bell described the building as a massive 70's overbuild; basically a big box with no internal supporting walls -- only columns -- and then four sets of fire stairs at the corners. The northeast stairs are coming out, which is where the opening to Stephen Ave and the city will be created. Bell pointed out that the Glenbow is the only museum he knows that didn't have a front door -- the entrance is only from inside the convention centre. So restoring that relationship to Stephen Ave was a priority.
This is the other side of the main floor; this was never accessible to visitors and was back-of-house / admin / office space. This is where the theatre will be going, with the intention to try and get some pedestrian interaction and give some love to 9th avenue. The wall in the distance on the right is the 9th Ave wall; those concrete insets are the backs of the Oldrich relief sculptures. The theatre will be two stories, with windows on 9th, I imagine a lot like the Central Library theatre on 2nd St SE. There will be an entrance off 9th, which can also be used as a theatre vestibule so that the theatre can host events after hours.
This is the second floor, the site of the Cube gallery. As I mentioned, the building is all 1970s engineering overbuild, and the systems and envelope are 50 years old and need replacing, but the structural concrete is in great shape. The one place there aren't columns is above the old auditorium, since they didn't want a column coming down there, so there's post-tensioning used instead. As a result, they can cut through the 3rd floor slab in this one spot, which will create a pretty massive volume that can give them some flexibility for verticality in exhibits. All those waffle holes in the slab were hand-built forms back in the day!
This is on the 5th floor, which is a little more typical perhaps. The Glenbow is 8 stories, although only four have historically been accessible to the public. Bell said that typically museums keep a lot of their collection offsite, with cheaper climate-controlled secured storage in a warehouse somewhere. The Glenbow has everything on site, and the top four stories were staff-only storage and back-of-house areas. That's going to change at least somewhat; there will be access to all eight levels for the public. One of the challenges of this reno is that the decision was made to keep all of the art and artifacts on site during the renovation, rather than the hassle and risk of taking them offsite. (Amongst other things, the Glenbow only has one freight elevator. It's believed to be the largest in the city and they've taken an airplane in it, but they only have one.) So that wooden door and plastic covered vestibule in the back is keeping the dust out of the art collection. After the reno, the 4th floor will have a glass wall here where the public can see into the art collection; there will be a 'semi-curated' art display at the end of the racks.
And that leads out onto the roof above the fourth floor, which will become a patio/terrace (one hopes with some art - perhaps the 9th ave sculptures). This is a gigantic "how did they not take advantage of this" moment, and will be a real showstopper. You get a slightly different view of Stephen Ave from up here, not the one-floor-up +15 view nor the skyscraper view. It's going to be awesome. (PS: Shout out to BUMP for getting the first art on this terrace, with the massive mural on First on Tenth fka Bromley.) A couple more pictures from up here:
Also really visible from the terrace is the much-discussed cladding that's going up. The panels feel really smooth! Bell said that one of the goals with the material (and something they noticed when they had the test panels out on site at the supplier's yard) was that they reflected different light at different times of the day, so the building took on orange tones at sunset, blue tones in the midday, and so on, rather than something like the old cladding which sort of just sat there. I think it'll be really eye-catching. A couple more photos for you cladding sickos out there...
And then we finished up on the 7th floor, where some of the storage has been finished. It's all that movable high density space-saving storage, where the shelves are on tracks and can be moved with the wheels on the side. The shelves are covered in plastic for the time being as a construction dust measure, but will be open when the reno is finished. They are getting something like 30% more storage space, but it sounded like a lot of that is being taken up by storing things properly where the old storage had gotten a little hinky. There were polearms that were being hung in netting from the ceiling, requiring a ladder to access them; now they're being stored in cabinets like in a real museum. These are big cabinets; the upper picture has furniture and the bottom one includes the 1910 plaque that was on top of the Holy Cross hospital. Floors 6 to 8 will be mostly storage, although there will be a public lobby / lounge on each floor, with big windows looking into the storage areas, so you'll be able to see a random subset of the collection and see the depth of what the museum has. They have a lot of really cool stuff in here, much of which I don't remember seeing on display, such as Sir Francis Drake's snuff box and a watch that was given to someone as a gift by Oliver Cromwell.
That's the bulk of what I remember; it was a great tour and I'm grateful to Avenue and the Glenbow for the tour. I want to particularly shout out Nicholas Bell; I didn't realize until afterwards when looking him up for this post, but he was the curator who did WONDER at the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC; it was the first exhibition in a museum that had been closed for years with renovations (sound familiar? although in this case it was an 1870s rather than 1970s building). WONDER was an exhibit where each gallery in the building was taken over by a single artist who did a massive, room-size site-specific installation. It was the single coolest exhibition I've ever seen in a museum, so I'm excited to see what will happen when the Glenbow reopens in late 2025.
We started in the iconic main atrium. I think part of this vertical space will remain. The area that is now the auditorium will become partially the museum store, with a restaurant towards the corner where the store is now. Bell described the building as a massive 70's overbuild; basically a big box with no internal supporting walls -- only columns -- and then four sets of fire stairs at the corners. The northeast stairs are coming out, which is where the opening to Stephen Ave and the city will be created. Bell pointed out that the Glenbow is the only museum he knows that didn't have a front door -- the entrance is only from inside the convention centre. So restoring that relationship to Stephen Ave was a priority.
This is the other side of the main floor; this was never accessible to visitors and was back-of-house / admin / office space. This is where the theatre will be going, with the intention to try and get some pedestrian interaction and give some love to 9th avenue. The wall in the distance on the right is the 9th Ave wall; those concrete insets are the backs of the Oldrich relief sculptures. The theatre will be two stories, with windows on 9th, I imagine a lot like the Central Library theatre on 2nd St SE. There will be an entrance off 9th, which can also be used as a theatre vestibule so that the theatre can host events after hours.
This is the second floor, the site of the Cube gallery. As I mentioned, the building is all 1970s engineering overbuild, and the systems and envelope are 50 years old and need replacing, but the structural concrete is in great shape. The one place there aren't columns is above the old auditorium, since they didn't want a column coming down there, so there's post-tensioning used instead. As a result, they can cut through the 3rd floor slab in this one spot, which will create a pretty massive volume that can give them some flexibility for verticality in exhibits. All those waffle holes in the slab were hand-built forms back in the day!
This is on the 5th floor, which is a little more typical perhaps. The Glenbow is 8 stories, although only four have historically been accessible to the public. Bell said that typically museums keep a lot of their collection offsite, with cheaper climate-controlled secured storage in a warehouse somewhere. The Glenbow has everything on site, and the top four stories were staff-only storage and back-of-house areas. That's going to change at least somewhat; there will be access to all eight levels for the public. One of the challenges of this reno is that the decision was made to keep all of the art and artifacts on site during the renovation, rather than the hassle and risk of taking them offsite. (Amongst other things, the Glenbow only has one freight elevator. It's believed to be the largest in the city and they've taken an airplane in it, but they only have one.) So that wooden door and plastic covered vestibule in the back is keeping the dust out of the art collection. After the reno, the 4th floor will have a glass wall here where the public can see into the art collection; there will be a 'semi-curated' art display at the end of the racks.
And that leads out onto the roof above the fourth floor, which will become a patio/terrace (one hopes with some art - perhaps the 9th ave sculptures). This is a gigantic "how did they not take advantage of this" moment, and will be a real showstopper. You get a slightly different view of Stephen Ave from up here, not the one-floor-up +15 view nor the skyscraper view. It's going to be awesome. (PS: Shout out to BUMP for getting the first art on this terrace, with the massive mural on First on Tenth fka Bromley.) A couple more pictures from up here:
Also really visible from the terrace is the much-discussed cladding that's going up. The panels feel really smooth! Bell said that one of the goals with the material (and something they noticed when they had the test panels out on site at the supplier's yard) was that they reflected different light at different times of the day, so the building took on orange tones at sunset, blue tones in the midday, and so on, rather than something like the old cladding which sort of just sat there. I think it'll be really eye-catching. A couple more photos for you cladding sickos out there...
And then we finished up on the 7th floor, where some of the storage has been finished. It's all that movable high density space-saving storage, where the shelves are on tracks and can be moved with the wheels on the side. The shelves are covered in plastic for the time being as a construction dust measure, but will be open when the reno is finished. They are getting something like 30% more storage space, but it sounded like a lot of that is being taken up by storing things properly where the old storage had gotten a little hinky. There were polearms that were being hung in netting from the ceiling, requiring a ladder to access them; now they're being stored in cabinets like in a real museum. These are big cabinets; the upper picture has furniture and the bottom one includes the 1910 plaque that was on top of the Holy Cross hospital. Floors 6 to 8 will be mostly storage, although there will be a public lobby / lounge on each floor, with big windows looking into the storage areas, so you'll be able to see a random subset of the collection and see the depth of what the museum has. They have a lot of really cool stuff in here, much of which I don't remember seeing on display, such as Sir Francis Drake's snuff box and a watch that was given to someone as a gift by Oliver Cromwell.
That's the bulk of what I remember; it was a great tour and I'm grateful to Avenue and the Glenbow for the tour. I want to particularly shout out Nicholas Bell; I didn't realize until afterwards when looking him up for this post, but he was the curator who did WONDER at the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC; it was the first exhibition in a museum that had been closed for years with renovations (sound familiar? although in this case it was an 1870s rather than 1970s building). WONDER was an exhibit where each gallery in the building was taken over by a single artist who did a massive, room-size site-specific installation. It was the single coolest exhibition I've ever seen in a museum, so I'm excited to see what will happen when the Glenbow reopens in late 2025.
Duck Lightning
Senior Member
The original opening date was going to be in 2024 so it's already behind schedule.
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
ByeByeBaby
Active Member
I believe they said that the renovations will be done by the end of 2024, but at that point they have an empty museum and it'll take another year to actually set up all of the exhibits. Because it's one thing to have art and artifacts covered in plastic sealed up in a room during construction and quite another to have them out and on display.
Most projects, you can finish the construction work and then open right away after doing one good final clean of whatever construction debris wound up on the fixtures, but a museum exhibit can't be cleaned and is a lot more work than loading in furniture. One exhibit can take weeks or months to install, and they have to do all of them.
FCC1982
Active Member
Wow - thanks for the thorough summary of your Glenbow site tour BBB - I feel like I was on the tour myself now 
MichaelS
Senior Member
Continuing the trend of capital projects going over budget.
Mountain Man
Senior Member
Should have asked Smith to contribute during the campaign! lol
Alex_YYC
Senior Member
AtlanticAvenue
Active Member
Mountain Man
Senior Member
They don't seem to be moving fast with the cladding...
Rollerstud98
Active Member
I started a job here in December. Unable to finish at the time because we were waiting on cores to be completed. Called back in last week saying our cores are done. They have the cores for the next phase done which we don’t have any equipment or materials for yet. Shit show there. Still not ready for what we started in December.