ROMmania

The Royal Ontario Museum (locally known as the ROM) is one of my favourite buildings in Toronto, a bold combination of old and modern. It is the largest museum in Canada and houses around six million items. Most of its recent attention has been due to it architectural additions however rather than the exhibits.
Since we've been coming to Toronto they've been wanting an extension to the building to give them more exhibit space. They also wanted something new and modern to dress up the older looking building. So what they now have is known as the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. They haven't just added an extension to the building, they've turned it into a piece of modern art. Not everyone likes it however, in fact many hate it, but I like the combination of the old and the new.

If you look closely at it it appears that the new addition is just haphazardly added to it. Windows are partially covered by the new structure, there are gaps here and there that look like they should have been avoided. From the inside you can see areas where it joins the old building where it cuts across large doorways and creates small rooms of weird angels that don't appear to be of any use. While in the museum the other day we noticed a window that has been blocked over by the crystal but leaving a foot gap to the outside world that was full of snow.
The addition has just been completed, and when we went on Thursday it was to see the dinosaur exhibition that's just re-opened inside the crystal. Lots of dinosaurs.

Last month an art group got several hundred people together outside the building and staged a mass light sabre fight up and down the street. In one newspaper a writer said it was probably a suitable location since it looks like a star destroyer has crashed into the building.