Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum's Crystal: a Time Lapse Video

Four-years in the making, the stunning "Crystal", a feat of modern architecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) was finally finished this year. And the ROM has a 5-minute time-lapse video that documents the entire process!

"The hundreds of school buses parked outside day after day, the large tree going from green to red to bare as the seasons go by, and finally the formation of the outer shell and the stream of people into the crystal make this an amazing depiction of a long, complicated process."

Link [embedded YouTube] | Photo: Aviad2001 [wikipedia] - Thanks Photosapience!


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It's not just a matter of taste, but of waste! I listened to an architecture prof explain why the structure couldn't have been built of glass or plexi: it wouldn't have possible to have those materials at those angles without considerable metal support, which would have ruined the look. Secondarily, transparent panels would have looked like garbage with opaque adhesive holding them together, but the only sufficiently strong transparent or translucent adhesives apparently degrade in direct sunlight! Then there's the matter of the German engineering firm who were supposed to ensure that the joins between the older structure and the crystal were water-tight. As my inside source told me, they procrastinated beginning work and held up the completion of construction before finally admitting that they didn't think it could be done. So, tens of millions of $$$ doesn't buy something that won't leak.
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"If you couldn’t look at it with some amount of respect before, you would after flipping through those prints."

I did have respect for it until I found out they decided to wedge it in between an older building. It is such an eye soar. Its a zit.

If it was standing by itself, it would be considered in the top 10 worldwide. But, because the designing idiot had the idea to sandwich it between 2 older buildings makes it the ugliest building in Toronto (people voted on it in the Toronto Star). I personally would've thought it would've been better to redo the outside structure, and add a new building to make it look like a castle. There's a reason why Europe interests so many Canadians, and Canada lacks all of it. Yeah it wasn't populated at the time like Europe when castles were built, but that's why you build them. Then, it looks like a museum, which represents history. If this was the museum of architecture, then there's no problem, but it's history.

Now Union station is on the hit list, including the distillery districts Roundhouse. And it will not surprise me of Loblaws sells Maple Leaf Gardens to someone to butcher it as well. I guarantee you when the building needs to be redesigned there will be little objection, no matter how complex or hard it was to build. You can build a car for 2 million dollars but what good is it if it lacks function.
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I'm not big on it either, but I'm not a fan of modern architecture - this piece in particular. Still, despite the risk of being blinding on sunny days, I can't help but admire it's complexity. I saw it every day from start to finish and even recently had the opportunity to look at the blue prints. If you couldn't look at it with some amount of respect before, you would after flipping through those prints.

I do wish that the ROM had gone ahead and bit the financial bullet and had it finished properly. The original design called for a lot more glass, and the building is weaker without it.
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