Last Week

This Week

1. There’s nothing crystaline
   about the ROM crystal—-
   tetra-s…octa-s…icosa-s…dodeca-s:
   crystal hedrons all
   are elegant, refined and ordered,
   patterns, features and operations
   telling stories, natural responses
   to light and dark, to force and flow,
   to stress and space
   and explosions, nature’s causes and effects.

   The ROM is like an explosive teen,
   all over the place, like
   tumbling pick-up sticks,
   a flight of dominos,
   a deck of cards 52-pickup…
   mediocre at best.

   A program worthy
   of the Berlin Museum,
   not the Royal Ontario—-

   Posted by Dennis Winters  on  05/11  at  03:43 AM

2. I agree with the previous comment that there will be very little crystalline about the finished ROM. You can get a pretty good sense now that the budget has been exhausted on the structure. The steelwork is so dense that one can almost not see the sky through this pick up sticks pile of beams. I fear that the money left to clad the building will only allow the planned standing seam metal panels to be detailed to industrial standards.

   This is what happened at OCAD. But at least at OCAD the industrial details are on a simple box raised six storeys above street level where they do not greatly detract from the delight of the jazzy window pattern and pixilated paint job of the table top on stilts.

   The ROM will be a different matter where that metal siding detailing will have to contend with wonky angles and the fact that it will come right down to where you can get your hands on it. Instead of the advertised crystal I sense that the effect we are going to get will be more along the lines of a half dozen Butler buildings dropped into the ROM’s courtyard from a great height.

   Posted by  on  05/19  at  09:59 PM

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