Andrew3D said:
But I also wouldn't clump those structures you mentioned with something completed in 1968.
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Not specifically apropos the Planetarium, but these days, "completed in 1968" ain't exactly dirty words to the preservation-minded anymore. Just consider cause celebres such as IOTP, Bata, Riverdale Hospital--and Nathan Phillips Square for that matter. Heck, even consider Macy DuBois' currently-endangered brutalist office building over at 45 Charles East. And nearby, the Colonnade (1963) was designated as far back as 1983(!)

Dismiss the Planetarium as relatively mundane, featureless, and unimportant in the larger scheme of things, and maybe use the alibi of NYC having replaced the original 30s Hayden Planetarium with the Rose Center. But *don't* dismiss it because it was completed in 1968.

Also, remember that one of those structures I mentioned, Eric Arthur's Wymilwood, dates from 1952. 16 years separate that from the Planetarium. 39 years separate the Planetarium from now...
 
May 3:

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Varsity, RCM, ROM, and 1 St Thomas

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somehow I thought the cladding was to be shinier....I'm a little dissapointed, but I guess over it must look quite striking
 
Walking along Bloor on Sunday the ROM was looking quite fantastic. Can't wait for it to be finished.

Who can remember the day when I had my 'Cultural Renaissance' master thread back in the same vein as the '400' list.
It's very good to see the Big 7 moving along:

Completed:
National Ballet Expansion
Opera House
Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Arts

Close to Completion:
ROM
Royal Conservatory of Music

Under Construction:
Festival Centre
AGO


Plus we have the Aga Khan museum and the rebirth of the Hummingbird Centre to look forward to.
 
I dunno; at this near-complete stage it's striking me as a lot of anticlimactic hot air, architecturally speaking.

Whether or not it desecrates the ROM, or the urban setting, is beside the point. In fact, my assessment is a bit of an inversion of that sort of judgment. But perhaps it's the perfect building for Toronto to jump the "starchitect fatigue" shark over...
 
Both. The big, grey roof is Varsity Arena, the silvery shard poking above it beside 2BW is the ROM.
 
Looks fantastic. I walked by on Sunday night and could get a nice view to the interior which was lit up. Pretty neat!
 
Daily Commercial News
May 8, 2007
Architecture

Design, steel shortage delay ROM

DON PROCTER

TORONTO

When the Royal Ontario Museum’s new addition — the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal — opens next month, it will be a year-and-a-half behind the fast-track schedule and $50 million over budget.

Chalk up the delays and cost overruns to a dearth of structural steel on the market and a complicated design by architect Daniel Libeskind.

The Crystal has virtually no 90 degree angles, says Francisco Alvarez, ROM’s director of communications. The engineering team was faced with a daunting task of how to turn Libeskind’s design into a building that would stand up.

“It was often a matter of doing two or three passes at a method of construction to get it right,” adds Alvarez.

Delays also resulted because of the shortage of custom steel in Canada. From the time the project was priced out to the time it went to tender three years later, steel prices had nearly doubled because of the pent-up demand in China, points out John Martin, project director of Vanbots Construction Corporation, construction manager.

Other major Toronto projects also have budget overruns because of the steel shortage, says Alvarez, pointing to the Art Gallery of Ontario’s new addition and the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts as examples.

Martin says constructing the Crystal differs from conventional building methods where a portion of the structural steel skeleton is erected first, followed by poured concrete slabs. Not so at ROM. Following conventional construction methods would have left the structure unstable.

“We had to put up all the structural steel and shore it up before we could pour any concrete and put up any cladding.”

Another complication was that every steel element had to fit “pretty well perfectly,” Martin says. “If it didn’t, we couldn’t just move it to the side and cut it to fit. Everything is fabricated with connections in six or seven different directions coming into a connection point.”

Designing and installing the extruded aluminum cladding panels was difficult as well because the lack of right angles at panel intersections. Like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, no panel could be recut on site or the Crystal simply wouldn’t have fit together, he says.

“It’s actually installed as per the computer model, not as per what’s on site.”

Each panel was precision cut in Germany by fabricator Josef Gardner, the company also responsible for the cladding’s erection.

On the inside of the Crystal, the daunting task of installing walls and ceilings was awarded to Marel Contractors. With walls at odd angles — some at 45 degree angles — often the only way workers could install them was with ladders and, in some cases, wearing workboots with cleats to climb the walls.

There was no room for scissor lifts or even scaffolding in some areas, says Martin.

He says the Crystal is the most unusual building he’s ever constructed. “It’s been a great job to work on.”

Libeskind’s Crystal was selected from a number of designs in an international design competition.
 
I walked by it last night as the sun was getting low: I was relieved to find it looked great. Just less than two weeks ago, the large white insulation patches against the fine-boned new cladding, all shot through with the unfinished dark windows made the entire complex look monumentally crass and jarring. I was afraid, despite being a supporter of this building all along, that the moment of truth had come, and was a downer, to say the least.
Walking by last night with most of it covered, with "its clothes on", as my buddy said, it's looking sharp. It's regained the outscale, powerfully abstract visual span it had when it was clad white on black, and has come together to look finely finished, not just cheaply aluminum sided, or 'made do'.
It is alarming in scale. Which I think is one of its great strengths.
Walking along the north side of Bloor, your eye hardly knows what to make of it. The planar expanses of the walls are so huge, sheer, unornamented and tough. To me, actually, it looks like part of a glacier that's broken off. I like this part of it though - that it does not try to be particularly 'people friendly'. To me, it reminds me how impersonal, strong and fierce nature can be - the nature we're showcasing inside.
I'm sure people won't like it because it's not prettified, done with 'human scale referents, that it's brash, abstract, awfully powerful....that it seems to sweep the rest of the museum aside: well, that to me is a wonderful new twenty-first century view of nature, and where we stand regarding it again.

Personally, after holding my breath, I'm becoming a fan of this building (again).
 
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