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For those who grew up in Toronto in the 1980s and 1990s, a visit to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) was much different than it is today. There was no Crystal, no touch screens, and no WiFi — the pre-renovation ROM was an analog delight of stuffed birds, mummies, dinosaur bones, along with a full-blown Space Age planetarium and theatre.
To begin, visitors used to enter the ROM via University Avenue, through the grandiose but cramped side entrance that welcomed visitors with a marvellous Byzantine mosaic ceiling held up by giant stone arches, the promise of good things to come. Once inside, the ROM offered a mix of old fashioned taxidermic display cases full of stuffed animals from around the world, countless Greek, Roman, and Chinese statues, clay pots, and painted vases, and of course, no trip was complete without a visit to the Dinosaur Exhibit and animatronic Bat Cave.
Complete with plastic ferns, hand-painted backdrops, and soft mood lighting, the old Dinosaur Exhibit was a staple of any visit to the ROM with children in tow. Wandering through the various eras of Life on Earth, visitors were treated to a series of staged 'natural' scenes of daily dinosaur life, with T-Rex and Triceratops skeletons vying for space amid a plastic rainforest set.
After running through the cultural displays, and likely skipping the rock and gem collection, a trip through the 1988-opened Bat Cave was a must. The dark fibreglass cave, with its canned recordings of dripping stalactites and the highly anticipated rush of a flock of bats swarming overhead, an illusion made all the better via a clever use of flashing lights and shadows, made for a memorable experience for children of all ages.
However, back in 2002, as part of the $90 million CAD Renaissance ROM initiative, funded in part by a $60 million investment by the Federal Government and a $30 million donation from Jamaican-born businessman and philanthropist Michael Lee-Chin, the ROM was in for some major changes. In 2003, work began on the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a massive new addition and main entrance for the ROM, which would also double as the new home of the much-improved Dinosaur Exhibit, today a major tourist draw and icon of the modern city that Toronto has become.
Built on the site of the former North Terrace, which had been built during a previous round of renovations between 1978 and 1980, the Crystal was soon to become the defining architectural element of the ROM upon its completion in 2007. Viewed in the archival time-lapse video above, the multi-year construction of the Crystal, complete with the necessary demolition of the North Terrace, can be seen. The removal of this terrace is particularly interesting as it reveals a brief glimpse of the historic footprint of the museum as it appeared from the 1930s up to the 1970s.
Completed in 2007 to much fanfare, as well as its fair share of public criticism surrounding the Crystal's modern appearance in contrast to the much more staid, architectural heritage of the rest of the ROM, the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, designed by Daniel Libeskind, has been a fixture of the the modern ROM experience for nearly a decade.
Love it or hate it, today's ROM has successfully moved into the 21st century, with modern exhibition spaces, world-class special exhibits and permanent collections, and a public profile that has been boosted by its bold re-design and prominent street presence.
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| Related Companies: | B+H Architects, Hariri Pontarini Architects, LRI Engineering Inc. |
