Tuesday, November 4, 2008

To Me, It Looks Like A Rollercoaster

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in downtown TO, has been undergoing a pretty sizable renovation for the past few months. I mean, it hasn't taken as long as my bathroom did but, still :-)

The other day I took a few snaps of this lauded, still under-construction, Frank Gehry design:





Mr. Gehry, for all his outstanding international clout, has the dubious honour of being a TO native who has never actually designed anything in Canada before.

I am trying to keep an open mind, but I gotta say, I've seen this thing go up and I don't like it yet. I mean, it isn't the monstrosity that is the Chin Crystal (I won't even link to this piece of crap - sorry to offend you if you like it...), but its glassy, unidimensional modernism doesn't thrill me in any way. Of course, I welcome your opinions!

Exciting News! The AGO is offering free admission for 3 days (November 14 - 16 2008). How on earth it's going to be ready to open, given snaps above, is beyond me. So check the website (see link above) for more details before trooping out.

10 comments:

  1. Gehry is so revered, but most of his buildings give me headaches. I prefer a good Calatrava, meself. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am a HUGE Gehry fan. So much so that you might be seeing me in 2009, K.line. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'll be interested to see how the finished product looks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. it looks cool. I want to go there.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gehry hasn't worked with so much glass in quite some time, it's nice to see him finally having a break from ultra-environmentally unfriendly titanium.

    I'd wait until the building was complete, because my guess would be that lighting behind these glass facades could make this quite a beautiful building.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sal: I'm so ignorant about architecture - Isn't calatrava a wine :-)

    Belette: Come to TO! Visit me!

    E: Me too. Let's do a trip with Belette...

    Songy: And you come along too!

    Ms. U: This is really good advice. I'll keep you posted on my feelings about the final.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm not a fan of Gehry's at all but I like the documentary about him done by Sydney Pollack called Sketches of Frank Gehry.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Dale: Thanks for your comment. I'll have to find that at the video store. They just did a long segment on him / AGO update on the news a couple of nights ago. I'd never seen this news channel profile anything so completely. It was bizarre...

    ReplyDelete