The Royal Ontario Museum has been named one of the world's most spectacular museums by Emporis, a global Germany-based company that collects data on publically and economically valuable buildings. Museums were reviewed and selected by a jury of "building experts" from Emporis.
The report aims to look at the museum itself as a contributor to "the breathtaking symbiosis of exhibits and architecture," and cites museums among "the most impressive buildings of our time."
The selection featured 15 museums from Austria to Qatar. Here's what was said about the ROM:
Museum design allows architects to play with a very wide range of architectural forms and styles. This can be seen for example in Daniel Libeskind's deconstructivist works such as the Jewish Museum in Berlin or the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. His asymmetrical structures of iridescent steel and glass, with sloping floors and walls without right-angles, attract the attention. That an empty architectural shell can draw crowds all by itself was demonstrated by the 350,000 visitors who came to marvel at the Jewish Museum even before it opened.
Famed architect Frank O. Gehry, originally from Toronto, was also recognized. The report states:
The most prominent example is star architect Frank O. Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao, a building that stands like no other for this new understanding of museum architecture. The shiny silver monumental sculpture was the principal reason for Bilbao's transformation from a small industrial city into a major international center of art, a transformation that has come to be known as the "Bilbao Effect." The building continues to this day to influence the architecture of many a 21st-century museum.
Read the full report
here.
Original source: Emporis