Two and a Half Hours at the AGO

A couple of weeks ago, I was in downtown Toronto for an interview, so I figured since I was already there, I'd take a break from my studying and check out the new and improved Art Gallery of Ontario....

I had been waiting for the new Frank Gehry addition to the AGO since 2006 when they started construction.... it is his first major work here in his own hometown.... I liked it better than I had expected... I thought it looked kinda boring from the scale models and renderings.... I thought it could have been more funky, it is Frank Gehry after all... but I guess the finished product is funky enough, but boring enough to fit right in here in Toronto.... the glass facade took on an almost metallic quality in the sunshine.... quadruple click the center of the picture to see how it looked back in June 2006....

Very cool and purdy.....

From Grange Park, you can see the back of the new and improved AGO.... quadruple click The Grange to see it back in 2006.... I'd bet that building would disappear if the sky was just the right colour....

Twisty stairs....Twisty stairs echoed by the trees....

Twisty stairs continued inside....
Climbing those stairs got me dizzy.... literally....

I met up with my friend Chuck at 6pm, admission is free on Wednesdays from 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm.... I figured I might as well appreciate some of the art inside, and not just the architecture..... fortunately, she is an art appreciator.... unfortunately the AGO doesn't allow you to take pictures of the art.... but don't underestimate the power of the Force....

We didn't get to see all the art because we joined a tour of The Grange.... it turned out to be more interesting for me than the art.... The Grange is the oldest brick house in Toronto, and is part of the Art Gallery of Ontario.... it was built in 1817, and donated to the art gallery in 1911... during the time of the renovations, the gallery received letters written by the original butler of the house, and it told of a young maid named Mary O'Shea, who the butler often caught keeping candle wax leavings and then burying them all over the house.... he would follow her secretly taking note of where she would bury the pieces of wax.... included in his letters was a map of where she had hidden her treasures.... so during the renovations, they decided to excavate.... they found the little treasures and so much more.... the first piece of wax they found was rolled up into a ball and contained within it was DROPS OF BLOOD..... dooo do do do doooo.... I won't tell you the rest of the story coz you should check it out for yourself.... but let me just say it gets weirder and weirder....

Anyways, here's what the glass facade looks like from the inside....

I'm gonna have to go back to see the rest of the art.... I also intend to do some more clandestine photography.... I don't get why we can't take pics, most of the other museums I've visited allow photography.... oh well, I love a challenge.... stay tuned..... here's a last shot, you can see the CN Tower's reflection....

TECHNORATI TAGS: art gallery of ontario, ago
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Shiny

Whoaw! I haven't played in a while.... but I'm glad to finally have some time to spend on my much neglected blog.... Here is a picture of the brand spanking new, and very SHINY "Crystal" at the Royal Ontario Museum.....

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You might remember that I posted this for the "architecture" PhotoHunt....

So here is the finished product.....

Here is a peek into the interior of the Crystal.... It's pretty SHINY inside too....

I should probably devote an entire blog to this thing.....

Until then, Happy Photohunting folks!

TECHNORATI TAGS: saturday photohunt, saturday photo scavenger hunt, memes, royal ontario museum, ROM crystal

Architecture

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This is not my favourite example of ARCHITECTURE in the City of Toronto, but it definitely is one of the most interesting! It is the Ontario College of Art & Design. I always feel like it's going to topple over whenever I walk by.... it is pretty cool though.

This one, on the other hand, I am excited about......

It is the new Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum, which is not yet completed, but should be by this June. A lot of people do not like it, but I love the juxtaposition of the new shiny glass and silver, with the old stone of the original facade. It definitely beats what used to sit there. I'm also excited about it because they will finally take the dinosaurs (among other things) out of storage and place them in their new home. The architect is Daniel Libeskind, who also designed (among other things) the new World Trade Center in New York City. If you live in Toronto, the opening will be at sundown, on June 2. They will leave the space empty of exhibits until June 10 so that the public can appreciate the architectural space on its own. BTW, admission will be free on June 2-3. I've been keeping an eye on it's development and taking pictures, so you will definitely see a blog about it when it's completed.

Happy Photohunting Folks!

TECHNORATI TAGS: saturday photohunt, saturday photo scavenger hunt, memes, architecture, ontario college of art & design, royal ontario museum

And the Winner is.....

I went down to the waterfront yesterday for the announcement of the winning design for the central waterfront.....
I was disappointed at first (I guess you can surmise that my favourite design was not chosen), but then I was actually pleasantly surprised to realize that the winning design was the best choice....... drumroll please..... the winning design was that of the West8 team......










ya the design with the tacky gigantic Maple Leaf..... I guess that really turned me off when I first saw it, that I didn't really give their design much of a chance when I listened to their presentation last month.....but like I said before, they had a lot of nice details in their design.....I was given a copy of their powerpoint presentation at the announcement ceremony, so I was able to go over it again.....I very much appreciated the fact that they put much thought into their design, guided by principles rooted in Canadiana.....hence the giant maple leaf I guess.....

Ingrained in every Canadian's psyche is the image of summer's spent at the cottage by a lake.....a wooden dock extending into the water..........

from this image comes West8's vision for the waterfront..... the city is the cottage and Lake Ontario the lake.....Toronto seems to have ignored our "natural" heritage in the development of the waterfront, evident by the lack of trees.....in fact this "ignorance" of nature extends from the waterfront into suburbia....when I used to fly back and forth between Manila, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Vancouver, and Toronto, the first thing I noticed flying over Toronto was the relative lack of large stands of trees, and the abundance of urban sprawl.....that is not the image of Canada I was indoctrinated with all my life, and it was very disappointing.....the West8 plan seeks to remedy this by planting double rows of large native species of trees..... as they put it, 'from "naked waterfront" to "green foot", an authentic Canadian wilderness is planted at the base of the metropolis'....'a robust landscape with a strength and presence of equal majesty to the city's skyline'.....bravo....

Another excellent aspect of the West8 plan is the transformation of Queens Quay Boulevard..... currently it has 4 lanes dedicated to cars, 2 for the streetcars and whatever is left over for pedestrians, bikes, skaters, and what not.....the plan is to take 2 of the car lanes (eastbound lanes) and give it to the people, and to the trees as well.... in addition, unlike the four other design concepts, the West8 plan does not call for the streetcar tracks to be moved..... this brings us to the very important fact that this means the West8 plan is more feasible, less expensive, and as it was re-iterated during the ceremony yesterday, this means we will be able to see the results of this plan "sooner rather than later".....in fact, the south side of Queens Quay may be closed as early as this summer for the start of construction, to give us a glimpse of the ultimate design concept sooner rather than later .....

I was comforted when comments were made regarding elements of the design that were described as "kitschy and unconvincing".....namely the huge maple leaf thing....the Chinese Dragons at the foot of Spadina....and that resources should be concentrated in the more "convincing" aspects of the design..... I think the overall design still needs something on the grand scale though, something impressive like those ship-like structures in the Foster and Partners design....incidentally, one reason against that design, as well as the P.O.R.T. design with the weather viens jutting out of the water, was the fact that anything permanently placed within the inner harbour would interfere with established water traffic routes......more importantly, it would need to go through a long approval process.....and I think people are pretty much tired of waiting to see results on the waterfront revitalization....so enough talk already, lets see some construction..... Angelo de los Angeles

Sim City Toronto

Have you ever played Sim City? The premise of the game is simple, you build a city......... you start by building roads and zoning the land for residential, commercial and industrial use..... you provide electricity and water....and if you build it, they will come....people will move in and industries, houses, condos, office buildings, stores and even farms will be built.....I'm so addicted to the game that I have to keep the CD far away from my computer, or my day will be shot.....before I came home to Toronto I spent about a week doing nothing but waking up in the morning, grabbing some coffee, playing Sim City, going to the bathroom, then going to bed, only to wake up to repeat the cycle again....well it help get me through a difficult break-up, and I ended up with a wicked city.....it was more than a city actually, it was an empire.......

When I finally came home to Toronto, I looked at the skyline and saw new buildings popping up everywhere, and I could've sworn that I could also see blocks of zoning like in the game.... commercial, industrial, and residential, roads and utilities, etc....or perhaps I had played the game so much that the images were just burned into my retinas....at any rate, I had come home to a real life, not so "sim" city....

To feed my obsession further, I learned of the plans to revitalize the city's waterfront.....

thousands of acres of land sit as parking lots or lie delapitated and rusting away .........

remants of Toronto's industrial past.....

the plan is to transform these areas into places worthy of the prime location on which they are situated, and to draw the city to its waterfront.....

I've been keeping up to date with what seems like the slow progress of this plan, but this year, it seems to be speeding up.....pockets of construction have begun or are slated to begin all along the waterfront .....construction of HTO Park at Maple Leaf Quay in the central waterfront between Spadina and Rees in well underway



..... and will transform the quay into an urban concrete beach......

Construction of the first new neighbourhood in the West Donlands also began just this March and will re-claim this wasteland integrating it into the neighbourhoods which surround it, like the Distillery District, St. Lawrence Market, Corktown, Old York.....

The East Bayfront is planned to be more of a commercial district with some residential, planned for occupancy by 2008......

At the mouth of the Don River in the Portlands....where the Gardiner becomes the DVP, a new park will be constructed...... Commissioner's Park ..... it will have all sorts of sports fields and ammenities...... this is what it looks like now.....

And this is what it should look like in the future......

Last week I was able to attend an exhibition of the design competition that called upon five international teams to present design concepts for the central waterfront .....it is envisioned that at the foot of each street that ends at the water (like Spadina, York, Reese, Yonge, Jarvis, Parliament), public gathering places be created, and that a continuous promenade be constructed to tie together the entire span of the waterfront.....

Here are some pictures of the designs.....you can click on each team's name to see their entire presentation....I was completely unable to relate or understand one of the designs so I pretty much ignored it 'cause looking at it gave me a headache and made me confused...

From the team of West 8 & du Toit Allsopp Hillier:

....lots of nice details, but I think that big maple leaf....which is acutally a floating dock....is kinda tacky.....

From Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects & Martinez Lapena-Torres Architects:

.....they propose building another island in the inner harbour....I thought that was kinda cool at first, but then not really.........

From the P.O.R.T. team:

.....they tie the entire waterfront together with these weather veins that jut out of the water .....they sway in the wind and change colour depending on the weather conditions....kinda cool but not really that impressive when you step back and take in the big picture.....they've got lotsa nice details though.....like this new ferry dock.....

or this new park/rink/pool design at the foot of York St......

Okay here's the design I didn't really get by the WASAW team :

My favourite comes from the team of Foster and Partners with Atelier Dreiseitl :

.....that ship-like structure will house shops, restaurants, bars, hotels, gardens, etc......the length of the streets which extend into these structures (Spadina, Reese, and York) will be lined by long pools of water that will direct you to the lake....

I think the exhibitions are over now, but you can learn more on this and the rest of the projects on the waterfront from the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation website.....you can still input your own feedback about these design if you want.....they will decide on the winning design on May 31st, 2006.....