The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) just launched a multi-million-dollar initiative to dramatically make the Museum more welcoming to the public and to revamp its controversial Michael Lee-Chin “Crystal” extension.
The $130 million project, dubbed OpenROM, was announced at a press conference on Wednesday that included Siamak Hariri of Hariri Pontarini Architects, the firm leading the design of the revitalization project.
“We’re going to re-introduce ROM to Toronto with a design that, in effect, turns the Museum inside out,” Hariri said at the news conference, adding that they will bring “daylight and views deep inside” and create new connections with Bloor Street, within the ground floor public spaces and the galleries.
Announcing OpenROM: a multifaceted initiative to create a destination cultural and civic hub in the heart of Toronto. Expect a revitalized main floor with sweeping and sunlit gathering spaces, fully animated by programming and performances, and free for all to enjoy. pic.twitter.com/dvNLjOWVfP
— Royal Ontario Museum (@ROMtoronto) February 14, 2024
Work is set to begin this month, and the Museum will remain open throughout construction (which is expected to last three years).
Once complete, visitors can expect a newly designed Bloor Street entrance, sheltered by a sizable canopy. Visitors will enter through a floor-to-ceiling glass entryway with direct sight into and out of the building.
A showcase “water feature” will wrap around the heritage façade and evolve with the seasons, transforming from burbling water in the summer to cracked ice in the winter.
Once inside, visitors will be able to sit in a spacious foyer, filled with artworks, objects, and specimens. About 6,000 additional feet of new gallery space will be added to the second and third levels of the crystal.
Visitors can enjoy everything from live music to hands-on learning at the Hennick Commons—a new four-storey sunlit atrium topped with a diagrid glass ceiling and featuring a 2,400-square-foot forum. A multi-level “lily pad” staircase will be built alongside the forum, offering three accessible overlook platforms, and joining together old and new wings.
The “Crystal”, aptly named for its prismatic form, is the 100,000-square-foot Daniel Libeskind-designed extension to the ROM that opened to the public in 2007. Its design has left critics divided for years, with some complaining about the change to the exterior cladding from glass/translucent material to aluminum; others have griped about how ice slides off of it and crashes onto the sidewalk, and others have simply called the structure “hideous” to look at.
It seems that Torontonians are looking forward to the renovations.
“Entrances should draw you into a space and make you interested to go in. The current entrance completely fails on this,” one Redditor noted after Wednesday’s ROM announcement. “All the problems this [new renovation] is addressing were so completely obvious from the original design and it’s good they’re finally fixing it.”
