UGLY. USELESS. BRILLIANT. NOTHING IS CRYSTAL CLEAR
A decade after the unveiling of ROM’s audacious architectural makeover, opinions remain divided,
First in a series taking a second look at Toronto’s architectural showpieces 10 years after the building boom. Local historian Bruce Bell has whisked curious tourists around Toronto on walking tours for decades now and, like a pop musician whose set list is the skyline, he tends to know which of the city’s sights capture their attention.
So a curious incident recently stood out to Bell. He was guiding a pair of German tourists on what has become a showstopping walk at the mouth of Philosopher’s Walk and, as usual, they paused to appreciate the stately and incandescent Royal Conservatory of Music building. Then, the tourists turned their attention to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and its famous Michael Lee-Chin Crystal and something weird happened. They loved it. “They were the first ever to tell me they liked the ROM, ever,” Bell said with a laugh.
“They had remarked to me what beautiful buildings they were and what a beautiful contrast that was.
“I was really surprised. Maybe the ROM is coming into its own.” He pauses a moment. “But I still don’t like it at all. At all.” Such is reality for the Royal Ontario Museum’s bold redesign: still polarizing after all these years.
In fact, it has been 10 years exactly since the ROM unveiled the ambitious, pugnacious five-point structure from Studio Daniel Libeskind and, with unapologetic panache, transformed a landmark intersection and institution while touching off one of the city’s fiercest and most enduring architectural debates.
Still, no consensus has crystallized. The building was just as divisive upon opening. At the time, the Star’s Christopher Hume deemed the addition “21st-century architecture at its most brilliant;” then-Globe and Mail architecture critic Lisa Rochon was already envisioning with enthusiasm the day the “tin pinata” would be torn down and replaced. In 2009, the Washington Post deemed the “ugly and useless” building the worst architecture of the decade; TripAdvisor users, as a barometer of the public, have by contrast hailed the ROM as Toronto’s third-best attraction.
“When the Crystal opened, it almost felt like a 50-50 love-hate thing,” recalled Bruce Kuwabara of KPMB Architects. “I’m not sure whether anything’s changed.”
Of course, one doesn’t project a spiky glacier over Bloor St. with discretion in mind.
When the $416-million Renaissance ROM project launched initially, the goals were to boost annual attendance from 750,000 to 1.3 million to 1.6 million; to greatly expand the museum’s gallery and public space and, well, to make a statement with sufficient volume to reverberate across the city and beyond.
Of the three finalists, it was Libeskind’s that most vociferously announced the ROM’s status as a contemporary, or even daring, cultural institution.
“Libeskind’s design was that one idea that could fundamentally transform our city, both physically and symbolically,” recalled Rob Pierce, the chair of the ROM board of governors.
The construction was no small feat. The “Crystal” is five interlocking prismatic structures affixed to the original 1914 Darling & Pearson museum via only the bridges that link them. With its glass and frosty aluminum exterior, Studio Libeskind took inspiration from the ROM’s mineralogy galleries and aimed to create a “luminous beacon,” CEO Carla Swickerath writes via email.
Others merely see, for better or worse, audacity for its own sake.
“It’s looking for attention and that’s quite clearly what that project is all about,” said Marco Polo, former editor of Canadian Architect magazine and professor in Ryerson University’s department of architectural science.
“I would say, generally speaking, we’ve moved away from that way of thinking, but it was very much a project of its time when that kind of spectacle was part of the game of international architecture.”
Aside from the esthetics of its metal-origami exterior, other critics focused their attention on the confusing layout imposed by the renovation, as well as more philosophical concerns about whether a museum’s design or collection should be its focal point.
“It’s a very challenging building to be in and to navigate. It basically disrupted the clarity of the neoclassical layout of the original museum,” said Kuwabara, who frequents the building and sent his kids to camp there. “He (Libeskind) thinks that the sloping of the floors is an act of disruption that literally destabilizes you, so that you’re walking up and off-balance a bit.
“I don’t know how challenging you want the world to be. But some of the best exhibitions I’ve seen are in very classical buildings or in very contemporary buildings like the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art.”
Well, the ROM recently addressed another continual knock on Libeskind’s rock: an overwhelming entrance area that feels, as Richard Sommer, dean of the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, puts it, “like you’re going through the turnstiles on the way to a sports game.”
The museum recently announced a plan to reopen and revitalize its heritage Weston Entrance, which has been closed since the debut of the Crystal. Critics have seized on this as a tacit acknowledgement of the Libeskind design’s functional shortcomings, but Josh Basseches, ROM director and CEO, says the decision is a response to the museum’s growing popularity.
“People say, ‘Oh, well, that must mean you don’t think that the Crystal entrance was successful?’ My answer is the opposite: the Crystal entrance is tremendously successful and it’s in part because of that attendance that reviving that second entrance is so important.”
How popular? Well, buoyed by a popular Chihuly exhibit and the new “Out of the Depths: The Blue Whale Story,” the ROM drew 1.35 million visitors for the fiscal year ending March 31. That’s the most in its history and places the ROM within North America’s Top 10 most-visited museums, Basseches says.
Whether that increase in visitors justifies the investment in its expansion is another matter. The financial burden of the Crystal is well documented and, as of March 31, the ROM was managing a debt of $26 million.
The fact adjustments are being made only 10 years after the ROM’s renovation, however, is hardly unprecedented. The museum’s awardwinning Terrace Galleries opened in 1984 to enough fanfare that Queen Elizabeth II made the trip. They were torn down roughly two decades later.
So the Crystal’s aluminum anniversary might not be the right time for appraisal. If nothing else, Toronto might benefit from taking a longer view.
“You have to wonder about the attitude we take towards the architecture that came before us,” Polo said.
“How do you rejuvenate these projects without necessarily obliterating what had come before? Moving the main lobby from Queen’s Park Circle to Bloor St. seemed like a very important idea at the time and now we’re saying to move it back. That’s a very short lifespan.
“We need to be a little bit more thoughtful about how radically we alter decisions that were made only one generation earlier.”
“They (two tourists) were the first ever to tell me they liked the ROM, ever. I was really surprised. Maybe the ROM is coming into its own.” BRUCE BELL WALKING GUIDE