Word: toronto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Libeskind's $135 million addition to the ROM, called the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal after its lead donor, is resolutely unlike anything Toronto - or most cities - has seen before. To begin with, it doesn't look much like the original building, which is actually two buildings: a yellow brick structure from 1912 that was overtaken in 1932 by a weighty limestone addition in a Beaux Arts style with trace elements of the Gothic and Baroque. Libeskind's Crystal bursts from the old museum's limestone in pointed shards of anodized aluminum. It touches the ground with the jagged footprint...
...Gothic Revival. It was what Le Corbusier set out to do with the Villa Savoie, the landmark Modernist house. Libeskind, 61, who spent much of his early career as an architectural theoretician and teacher, routinely operates at the same level of ambition. With his most important projects - and Toronto is one of them - he makes what you might call polemical buildings. They're manifestos in metal and glass, intended to move the argument forward about what's possible in architecture, what a building can look like...
Above all, both men were giving a lot of thought to the potential of the new building to bring life to Bloor Street, Toronto's main upscale shopping drag. "It was very important to us to see this as an urban project, not just an institutional one," says Thorsell, a former editor in chief of the Globe and Mail who wanted to bring the museum into the wider world he was accustomed to. "The old ROM had its elbows up high against the city; it was a big no. I wanted transparency and engagement on Bloor Street, a major urban...
Thorsell insists that in choosing Libeskind he didn't think he was taking a risk. That could be, but when Libeskind got the Toronto job, on Feb. 26, 2002, he was famous for exactly one building, the much talked-about Jewish Museum in Berlin that was his first major commission. But one year to the day later Libeskind won the competition to work out the master plan for the World Trade Center site in New York City, a commission that was originally envisioned to include his design for the Freedom Tower, the centerpiece of the project. It was a victory...
...Even in Toronto. "A building can have a very positive impact," Libeskind says. "People can say, 'This is not just Toronto the good, it's Toronto the interesting!' Why is it expected that this could only happen in Tokyo or London or New York City...