Crystal ROM Leaking

The ROM, also known as the Michael Lee Chin Crystal, designed by Daniel Liebeskind has gone from bad to worse in popularity among Torontonians (and spreading towards all Canadians as well). You can start calling him Leakskind. The high-profile 'starchitect' has committed the ultimate faux-pas in failing to keep water out of the building. The very first task of any building (particularly one with a seven-figure budget) is to provide shelter and the ROM has failed in doing so.

I feel a bit sad for the folks in Toronto because there has never really been a truly unique work of architecture come out of Toronto that has had the same effect as the Guggenheim in Bilbao or the Pompidou Centre, Paris. It tries, but never really breaks the threshold of creating any architecture of international merit. (The CN tower doesn't count). Alsop's OCAD building is a nice urban gesture, but internally, it's like working in any regular mundane office. The University of Toronto Residence Building by Morphosis might have some prominence, but it's still comparatively low-key at an international scale. The ominous black TD Towers by Mies Van der Rohe is an example that shows the same yearning for an internationally celebrated architect to bring good architecture to the city; I would criticize the TD Towers for being an exercise of scaling two Seagrams Buildings rather than one -- in the end it just isn't Seagrams. On the same note of authenticity, the ROM has a striking resemblance to the Denver Art Museum and has been criticized of copying and pasting the same formal elements to the Toronto site. Sidenote: the Denver Art Museum leaks as well. Toronto must be down on its luck, this just after being booted out of first place by the Burj Dubai.

The ROM was just never welcomed by the public. The museum directors wanted a glittering gem of contemporary stuff and they got that, even though the public thought it was a bad fit for the context. It goes as far as being described as a "cancer growing from the side of the Royal Ontario Museum". Perhaps the museum directors were caught up in the gamble or fanfare for the next best thing in Toronto. Friends of mine visited the building on opening day/week and found that there was still sawdust on the floors, electrical sockets left uncovered, and coffee spills all over the angular walls. The bigger spill however was millions of dollars into the crystal gem, which doesn't seem to have payed off. If refunds were possible in architecture, this would be one of those moments.