Architecture in Toronto - 2006 (slide show)

Here's another website,




and photo of the new work on the Gardiner Museum -



link - http://www.where.ca/toronto/article_feature~listing_id~166.htm

The Gardiner Museum
Collection Building
A bigger and bolder space solidifies the Gardiner Museum's place as the pre-eminent ceramics art museum in North America.
By Linda Luong


Since its inception in 1984, the Gardiner Museum?-the country's national ceramics museum?-has been a jewel of Toronto's cultural core. But two decades later, the museum needed room to grow. In January 2004, the museum embarked on a $20-million expansion and renewal through the generosity of philanthropists George and Helen Gardiner, who donated the initial pieces as well as a building to house them in.

Two and a half years later, the revamped museum threw its doors open for a special exhibition this past June and opened all its galleries in mid-September.

The reopening marks not only an important moment in the history of the museum, but another milestone in Toronto's recent cultural renaissance. Two new performance venues opened this year, too: the Young Centre for the Performing Arts (home to Soulpepper Theatre Company) in January, and the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts (home to the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada) in June. The Gardiner's facelift is the first in a wave of significant renovations to the city's museums and galleries, ahead of the Daniel Libeskind-designed Royal Ontario Museum (scheduled to open mid-2007) and the Art Gallery of Ontario's transformation by Frank Gehry (with a 2008 completion date).

AWARD-WINNING ARCHITECT
The Gardiner's expansion unfolded under the visionary eye of Canadian firm Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects (KPMB)?-the same designers behind the Distillery District's Young Centre. They envisioned a vertical expansion, with the addition of a third-floor pavilion, a grand front entrance, a glass terrace overlooking the city, an open-concept space to house the museum's unique collection and an expanded museum shop and clay studios.

The architects aimed to respect the intimate scale of the museum's original design, created by Keith Wagland in 1984, while maintaining the personable scale of the museum. "We re-imagined something that was already very good and took it to a new level of growth and excellence," says Bruce Kuwabara, the design principal on the project and the 2006 recipient of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada's Gold Medal?-the highest honour bestowed in the industry. "We gave this great small museum an intimate monumentality," he says.

The designers completely reconfigured the museum's layout, incorporating spaces that both reflected the needs of each gallery and also allowed for further growth. The Gardiner gained two new galleries to house the Asian and contemporary ceramics, plus a whole new third-floor pavilion. This new top floor features a special exhibitions gallery as well as a multi-purpose space that leads to an on-site restaurant?-run by acclaimed chef Jamie Kennedy (see "Jamie Kennedy's Plates,")?-with a glass terrace that boasts views of the ROM, Queen's Park and the University of Toronto.

I like the Gardiner Museum a lot. The Leslie Dan building was only partially constructed the last time I saw it so I'll have to check it out (preferably at night by the sounds of it) the next time I get to Toronto. I've been meaning to tell you, osso, how much I enjoy your posts on art and architecture. I don't usually respond ("I don't know much, but I know what I like") since I'm not well-schooled in those subjects but I find it interesting to read your posts. Merry Christmas if I don't run into you on another thread.

The secret is I don't know much either. I'm just an enthusiast. It's true I'm a landscape architect, but I didn't even start studying that until I was forty, and never did do thorough courses on architectural history - though I've some architectural historian pals. Doesn't keep me from floating opinions though.. more confusing, I fairly often change my opinions.

Thanks for the pep talk, Tai.
And Merry Christmas to you too.

osso :
last time we had lunch at jamie kennedy's restaurant , he was still at the royal ontario museum .
personally , i'm not very thrilled with the design of the addition to the ROM .
i had put VERY SPECIFIC recommendations for the design in the suggestion box when we visited the ROM ; they plainly ignored my suggestions ! the nerve !
merry christmas/happy festivus !
hbg

Yes - I remember talking about that with you on another thread (forget which, exactly). I remember figuring out what I didn't like (most) was the connection between the two buildings...




As a tangent, here's a ceramics museum I saw when in Faenza, Italy. I loved it, every minute of being in there.



from Wikipedia -
Faenza Majolica

In Faenza you can visit one of the world's most beautiful and complete art collections: the International Museum of Ceramics houses pieces from all over the world and from every epoch, from classical amphoras to the works of Chagall and Picasso, and there is a rich section dedicated to Faenza pottery in the golden age of the Renaissance. Other interesting art collections are located in the Municipal Art Gallery, the Diocese Museum, the Bendandi Museum and the Manfredi Library. The historic production of Faenza majolica is recognized worldwide as one of the highest moments of artistic creativity expressed through pottery. The tradition was born from a happy convergence of favourable conditions: a territory rich in clay, a centuries-old history of political and commercial relations with nearby Tuscany (especially with Florence) and great sensitivity and aptitude with regard to this art form. So over the years Faenza craftsmen and artists developed and perfected the decoration of hand made pottery, and the 60 workshop currently active - most of them in the city centre - offer the tourist the chance of unique purchases unavailable elsewhere.

The Gardiner Museum looks like a Frank Lloyd Wright creation.

This is in Ottawa.

I think that's one addition, CI, as on google images there are other elevations shown... interesting to see how they work together. It looks at first glance like they do make some sense together. (There's only one tiny photo that I can see so far on google of the rest of the museum, and I can't seem to link that.)







An addendum to my last post, that photo source is www.italiantourism.com

Er, what on earth is that?

But this is where I saw the Renoir collection in July 1997.

A couple of images of the Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building mentioned in the thread article -


link - http://www.greatspaces.utoronto.ca/projects/pharmacy.htm
photo credit - Photography by Gokche Erkan


link - http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/060821-2520.asp
(same photographer as above

Thanks for the link, ossoB.

I'm quite a fan of what they've done in the distillery district. There was one photo of the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in the slideshow. Nice use/re-use of buildings. The Leslie Dan building is a favourite of mine - not quite the crayon box that is the newest building for the OCA, but fun in its own way.

the crayon box

Are they all in Toronto?

This is one of my favorites in Toronto.

The Leslie Dan building and 'crayon box' are in Toronto, c.i.

Lots of interesting stuff going on in architecture and design. One of the great things about the annual Doors Open event is the ability to get into some of the newest buildings and sometimes get brief lectures from the people involved.

I like both of those for different reasons. The crayon box is hilarious and fun, the pair CI showed (not the ones in Ottawa!) are elegant, from here anyway.

just found a webcam that shows the Libeskind addition at the ROM under construction (webcam on the roof of the hotel across the street)



ROM webcam page link


~~~~

I drive by there at least once a month, coming home from concerts. I think it's looking quite good at street-level.

It's still that one connecting piece that bothers me. Not that it shouldn't connect, or be angled, I get all that.. just how it plays out in heaviness, as seen from here, meaning as seen by my eyes.

Libeskind's recent art museum design in Denver is very controversial, re both making some people disoriented while walking through the built structure, and difficult for the display of art. There's a proposed plan by him for the revamping of Denver civic center area/park that has a triggered a big whupdedo...

I admit to a bit of weariness about all this deconstruction-play.