The Crystal Age has Arrived

June 3, 2007 - After almost five years of planning, construction, and much controversy, the highly anticipated Michael Lee-Chin Crystal officially opened today at the Royal Ontario Museum. As the centre-piece of the Renaissance ROM project, the Crystal, along the opening of new galleries, will completely rejuvenate one of the Toronto's most beloved cultural institutions and help create a new civic landmark for the city.

The man behind the Crystal is the international renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, who also designed the famous Jewish Museum in Berlin (one of the most beautiful museums I've ever visited) and the original design for the Freedom Tower in New York. Libeskind was said to have drawn the first sketch of the ROM crystal on a napkin, and while the final design is slightly different (due to engineering and costs reasons), the Crystal still stands out as a sight to behold.

To celebrate the opening of the Crystal, the ROM opened its doors to the public starting at midnight today for a free 24 hour architectural preview. With our love for cities, buildings, design, and museums, of course Bernard and I were not going to miss this "event of the year" (you can read Bernard's thoughts on the ROM here). So yesterday (Saturday) morning, we woke up super early and made our way to the ROM to get those tickets. Our goal was to be among the first group of people to be inside the Crystal. When we got there at 9:45 am, there were already 10 or so people lining up outside for tickets (and they weren't giving them out till noon!). By 11:45 am though, the line had stretched all the way around the block to Trinity College!

The line-up wasn't so bad and I got to meet pretty much everyone from B's architecture class. We also launched into a debate about planners vs. architects vs. engineers - with the conclusion that planners, despite being the most important, never get any respect!!! Anyway, by 12:15 p.m., we were on our way back to uptown with those hot tickets in our hands.

At 11:30 p.m. that night, we were among the thousands of people lining up outside the new Bloor Street entrance of the Crystal, waiting to get in. The Crystal looks stunning illuminated - though I read somewhere that it would not be lighted up every night. By 12:30 am, we were inside the stunning new foyer of the ROM.

The ROM Crystal feels less intimate than the Jewish Museum - though this could be because the galleries are still bare at this time (and also the museum was packed). Having said that, the building is simply an architectural masterpiece. Here are some of my favourite parts of the new ROM:

1) The Stair of Wonder - the new staircase that extends from the basement to the fourth floor is not as spectacular as the old staircase with the totem pole, but it does feature some really neat exhibits along the way (everything from antlers to toy soldiers to bugs) and hence the staircase acts like a gallery on its own.

2) The windows - the small slices of window on the walls are perfect intimate places (we saw people crawling into them all night); the larger windows allow visitors to see the action on the street - and allow passerby on Bloor Street to see inside the museum, including the ROM's famous dinosaur displays.

3) The fourth floor - where the textile exhibit will be is a large yet intimate gallery with a ceiling filled with bright lights - definitely my favourite floor in the Crystal

4) The one and the new - the old facade of the original building was beautifully preserved and in some cases enhanced; visitors could see where the old meets the new in a carefully designed manner (apparently the new structure never actually touches the old building and merely meets it)

5) The open spaces, balconies and catwalks - they provide yet another way for visitors to enjoy the building and their museum experience, through carefully designed lookout points to galleries and floors above and below. I should also note that the walls themselves are a piece of art - none of them actually make a right angle with the ceiling.

6) Spirit Room - Though no where as powerful as the Axis of Death/Axis of Continuity/Holocaust Tower/Garden of Exile in the Jewish Museum, the Spirit room was purposely left empty, in a quiet corner of the atrium, to allow visitors to reflect and contemplate on the exhibits.

Despite one unfortunate incident where I got yelled at by a security guard for climbing the wall like Spiderman, the architectural preview as definitely an unique experience. Eric, B and I ended up staying there till close to 4 am - and the crowd inside was only getting bigger. Whether you love it or hate it, it seems like the ROM Crystal is the talk of the town - and getting people talking and being excited about a building, much less a museum, is success in itself. Time will tell on whether The ROM Crystal will help alleviate the museum's status as a must-see in the city. But if the opening is any indication, I have no doubts the Crystal will find a place in the architecture textbooks as one of the most daring and stunning pieces of work in North America.

As for the pictures - Bernard and Eric dressed up and both wore black that night. With the contrast from the white walls, both looked super duper hot! of course, they failed to tell me about the dress code and I ended up wearing white and pretty much blended in with the wall everywhere I walked. Boo.