Opening night at the AGO

I caught up with wL over sushi Friday night and stood in line in the rain to get into the newly-renovated AGO designed my Frank Gehry. I walk by the AGO everyday on my way to work and have always found the spiral stairs that jut out of the southern facade rather odd, but after having climbed the stairs down, I've a new appreciation for them because the view's fantastic!

Here's the view from the inside of the northern facade - it reminds me of a ship's skeleton. In the first picture below, you can see some of the names of the Italian families who donated $10 million for the new sculpture gallery.


The collection isn't entirely new to me so we wandered through rather quickly. I have plans to go back soon in the day to take in the views of the city - preferably in sunlight.

Swaminarayan Mandir

I made it out to Swaminarayan Mandir yesterday afternoon and am so glad I did because it is an extraordinary feat of architecture.

Photos were prohibited inside the temple but check out the amazing detail of the carved teak outside the main entrance below:


The great hall beyond the entrance doors featured the same intricately carved teak details. It was awesome.


The Mandir is open to the general public for meditation and prayer, so if you have the chance, do head on out to the 427/Finch for a visit. You won't be disappointed.

Doors Open Toronto: Swaminarayan Mandir

handout photo via Toronto Star

I blogged about Swaminarayan Mandir last July before it officially opened and this weekend I have the chance to see it since it is one of the buildings that will be featured in Doors Open Toronto this year. Click here for a listing of all the participating locations and click here for a video tour of Swaminarayan Mandir with Christopher Hume, the Toronto Star's architecture critic.

Toronto Style

The Toronto Star published a story in its Ideas section today about a distinct Toronto architectural style, or school, as noticed by Architecture professor Rodolphe el-Khoury who is Canada Research Chair in architecture and urban design at the University of Toronto.

In his own words, he describes it thusly:

If I were to be very general, it is a particular way, particular manner in the use of materials, for instance a predilection for very tactile materials, for rough stone, textured stone, rich woods and natural materials. What's interesting is the combination of this very rustic palette with a very modern, clean, formal language. So you get the sharp geometry and outlines of modern architecture, but you get the more traditional rustic materials blended with it, and it makes for a very particular flavour.

Click here to read more.

Now, if you had asked me even 3 months ago if I could imagine myself living in a modern home such as artist Charlie Patcher's home studio below, I would have said no way! I would have said my ideal home is something more traditional...maybe English or French in style...something you'd see in the Annex or Hogg's Hollow neighbourhood, but there's something about the square-shaped glass facade that reminds me of framed shadow boxes which I love.

Image by David Cooper via Toronto Star

The Architecture of Happiness

I finished The Architecture of Happiness today and am a little sad that I have because that means I won't be spending the next subway ride home reading the erudite thoughts of Alain de Botton, my not-so-secret nerd crush.

His writing always strikes a relevant and oftentimes emotional chord for me and this book is no different. I had to re-read the following passage several times because he describes what has been top-of-mind for me the last few months as I've begun to commit and make purchases for my new home come August:

Our sensitivity to our surroundings may be traced back to a troubling feature of human psychology: to the way we harbour within us many different selves, not all of which feel equally like "us", so much so that in certain moods, we can complain of having come adrift from what we judge to be our true selves.

Unfortunately, the self we miss at such moments, the elusively authentic, creative and spontaneous side of our character, is not ours to summon at will. Our access to it is, to a humbling extent, determined by the places we happen to be in, by the colour of the bricks, the height of the ceilings and the layout of the streets...

...We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need - but are at risk of forgetting we need - within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.

In turn, those places whose outlook matches and legitimates our own, we tend to honour with the term "home"...

...We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

AL teases me all the time about how much I have "going on up there" in my brain what with all the different virtual homes I have but I can't help it because there are so many different things that appeal to me for different reasons at different times - but in that moment, it feels like "me". So this was a helpful way to consider my seeming indecision about the interior design of my home.

Simply Fantastic

Richard Lautens/Toronto Star

I came across this article in today's paper about a Hindu temple going up at Hwy 27 and Finch and from the looks and sound of it, it's simply fantastic:

- the local Hindu community paid for the $40 million building without any public or foundation funding and provided 400 volunteer workers

- the materials include marble from India and Italy and limestone from Turkey which were first shipped to a series of villages in India where they were sculpted into their final form

- there is no steel amongst the 24,000 individual parts as the walls are all load-bearing and every element is carved in stone: the 340 columns are solid rock, the curved interiors of the domes are sculpted from marble and held in place with keystones and even the balustrades are made of carved stone

The project, begun in 2005 and officially opening July 22, will have taken only 18 months to build given that construction stopped in the winter months.

Renaissance ROM

I went to the Royal Ontario Museum tonight to check out the architechtural preview of the Daniel Libeskind-designed Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. This new addition has been controversial from the start, I mean, look.at.it. It's a colossal, abstract, aluminum-and-glass growth protruding from what was once a perfectly-fine Neo-Romanesque structure. I'll admit that I was rather ambivalent about it: I've gone to see visiting exhibitions and have driven/walked by the construction site and not given it very much notice. But with all the recent media coverage surrounding its opening, it's hard not to be excited.

While the juxtaposition between old and new is rather jarring at first, I've since decided that I like it. If nothing else, it's got the city engaged in discussions about culture and architecture and that is always a good thing. Anyway, I played tourist tonight and took pics inside and out:

The view from the NE corner of Bloor and Avenue

Close-up of the exterior from the entrance

The view eastward of Bloor from Level 3 of the Crystal

The original plan was to take a guided tour but the guide was running late and the group was really big, so we skipped the tour and decided to wander around on our own using the top-down approach:

Level 4, where the ROM's Textiles and Costume gallery will be

Level 3, where old meets new

One of the many angled windows

The open, expansive sightlines within the new galleries

The soaring, angled walls - one of these galleries will house the ROM's Dinosaurs

Renaissance ROM backgrounder

There was an interesting profile of Libeskind in the G&M a couple weeks ago that recounts his road to starchitecture, his relationship and partnership with his wife, Nina (who, incidentally is the daughter of late federal NDP leader David Lewis and sister of former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis), and his design philosophy:

The goal has been to be immune to expression, to produce objective, not subjective architecture. But who wants to be trapped in an anonymous box? Neutrality is not a value...The world is enriched not by neutrality or indifference, but by passions and beliefs. Why settle for buildings on a regimented formula that denies human desire?

And another profile of Michael Lee-Chin, the self-made billionaire who donated $30 million towards Renaissance ROM. His immigrant story as a mixed Chinese (he's Hakka, as a matter of fact!) and Black man from Jamaica who arrived without enough money to finish his engineering degree at McMaster and later made his fortune with AIC, a mutual fund company.

I love this anecdote about how Hilary Weston came knocking on his door to ask him to serve as lead donor:

He asked her why she went to the trouble of going all the way to Burlington when she could have looked across the breakfast table and asked her billionaire husband to take care of it.

"Well," said Mrs. Weston, "if Galen wrote the cheque, it wouldn't cause a ripple. But if you do it, it will be an inspiration to every immigrant."

And I'll admit it. I'm a sap because it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside as a child of Hakka Chinese immigrants.

Random Tuesday

I woke up to the sounds of heavy spring rain but by the time I left the house for work, it had calmed to a drizzle. The sun peeked through the clouds by late morning so I went out during the latter half of my lunch hour for a walk.

My office is located near a neighbourhood of million dollar homes so I like to walk and daydream about one day living in such a home. This one here is my favourite:

It's certainly not the largest home in the neighbourhood but there's an English charm to its formal manicured hedges that I love.

Also, my hair is beginning to annoy me. This is the longest it's been maybe ever and since it grows super-fast I'm seriously due for a cut. My stylist has been on maternity leave since January and I called the salon today to see if they had any news on when she would be back. When I saw her last in December, she said she might take 6 months instead of the full year off, so I thought I'd just wait it out. But my hair has grown 6 inches since then and as they don't know yet when she'll be back, I can't wait another month or 2.

So, I've decided I must take action: I am going to cheat on my stylist. The same stylist who took me from long to short to long to super-short to long again in our 6 year relationship. I hopped on the internet for salon recommendations and reviews and made an appointment for this Sunday afternoon.

I feel guilty already.

DAM, baby!

After our visit at the State Capital, N and I made our way over to the Denver Art Museum's new Daniel Libeskind-designed addition. He's the architect responsible for the transformation of the ROM currently underway so I was curious to see one of his finished buildings up close and personal. (I was trying to be all artistic with this pic but in hindsight, it kinda looks dumb...plus, I was trying to keep the scaffolding out of the frame.)

Here's the companion condominium project Libeskind designed facing the DAM called the Museum Lofts:


Below is my DAM favourite. It's called Pater Noster by Sean Landers and I would have been content to stay however long was necessary to take it all in. It's essentially an over-sized canvas filled with his ramblings. This bit in particular sums it all up rather nicely:

I'm just a very nervous person. I guess that's why I fill large canvases with babbling.

Finally, one of my favourite things about the DAM is all the interactive elements scattered throughout. N and I built this particular piece below. It's made up of a number of loose pieces that may be attached to the core with magnets. We're artistic geniuses, right?

Top 5 New-ish Buildings

Yesterday's post got me thinking about my favourite buildings and what they would be if I had to come up with a top 5. If I restrict the list to new-ish buildings, in no particular order:

1. The Gherkin in London
2. The Seattle Central Public Library in Seattle (duh)
3. The Four Seasons Centre in Toronto
4. The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles
5. The Dancing Building in Prague

I've experienced all of these buildings up close and personal in some way:

The Gherkin, as previously mentioned, I saw while riding on the bus. I remember spending an afternoon along the Thames and watching it amongst the London skyline, and wishing that it wasn't so cloudy so that I could take a good picture of it. I also remember kicking myself for not pulling my camera out while I had the chance on the bus - but I was too busy taking it all in to even think about taking a picture.

I went to Seattle over the Labour Day long weekend with my ex 2 years ago when I was out on the west coast for a visit. We drove to Seattle partly so I could check out the library (below), which I had first read about in an article possibly by the Toronto Star's architecture critic, in person. We took the elevator up to the top floor and walked our way down the ramps, browsing the stacks as we went - it was a great, albeit geeky, way to spend a morning.

via

The Four Seasons Centre makes me look forward to going to the opera - which I've still yet to do there. I did go see The Nutcracker this past Christmas and it's just a beautiful building inside. The glass box design really does bring the city in and makes the audience part of the spectacle to those without. Even within the building, the heavy use of glass gives this sense of amazing space - we could see from the top level down to the bar in the main lobby, and the wide steps allow for seating and lounging during intermissions. It's certainly not the typical night at the opera one would expect to experience, that's for sure.

It's interesting to me that the last 2 buildings on my list are Frank Gehry designs. I took the picture below of the Walt Disney Concert Hall back in June of 2004 when I was out there to visit one of my oldest friends. We waited in line in the bright sun to get rush seats to a piano recital by a Japanese pianist who my friend's husband was a fan of. This was soon after I had chopped off about a foot of hair (I was bored) to boy-short and I remember getting a sun burn on the back of my neck that day - it hadn't occurred to me to use sunscreen since the back of my neck was usually covered by my hair.

Anyway, we got some pretty great seats about a dozen rows from the stage and the cool thing was that the pianist ended up sitting a seat away from us after the intermission. We asked her for her autograph, even though we weren't really fans because we thought it'd be fun.


Finally, I was in Prague last April with another one of my best friends, S. Prague is a great city to wander around in. We spent an afternoon walking about with the aim of hitting some of the architectural highlights - Gehry's "Fred and Ginger" building below among them. The approach we made to the building was perfect because it sits on a corner and it just so happened that we came towards it from the front. We tried to get inside but the cafe that was on the main level appeared to be closed and it looked like a pass was needed to get into the building so we just admired it from without.

via

I've always found Top lists hard to compile, but this was fun. Based on the international flavour of my list, I've been very fortunate to travel and experience the architecture first-hand....and now that I'm done my list, it's suddenly occurred to me that I've completely forgotten the Sydney Opera House, which I toured in 2002 while there for my cousin's wedding! Drat!