First in a series taking a second look at Toronto’s architectural showpieces 10 years after the building boom.

Local historian Bruce Bell has whisked curious tourists around Toronto on walking tours for decades now and, like a pop musician whose set list is the skyline, he tends to know which of the city’s sights capture their attention.

So a curious recent incident stood out to Bell. He was guiding a pair of German tourists on what has become a show-stopping walk at the mouth of Philosopher’s Walk and, as usual, they paused to appreciate the stately and incandescent Royal Conservatory of Music building. Then, the tourists turned their attention to the Royal Ontario Museum and its famous Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, and something weird happened.

They loved it.

“They were the first ever to tell me they liked the ROM, ever,” Bell said with a laugh. “They had remarked to me what beautiful buildings they were and what a beautiful contrast that was.

“I was really surprised. Maybe the ROM is coming into its own.”

He pauses a moment.

“But I still don’t like it at all. At all.”

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Such is reality for the Royal Ontario Museum’s bold redesign: still polarizing after all these years.

In fact, it’s been 10 years exactly since the ROM unveiled the ambitious, pugnacious five-point structure from Studio Daniel Libeskind and, with unapologetic panache, transformed a landmark intersection and institution while touching off one of the city’s fiercest and most enduring architectural debates. Still, no consensus has crystallized.

The building was just as divisive upon opening. At the time, the Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume deemed the addition “21st-century architecture at its most brilliant”; then-Globe and Mail architecture critic Lisa Rochon, meanwhile, was already envisioning with enthusiasm the day the “tin pinata” would be torn down and replaced. In 2009, the Washington Post deemed the “ugly and useless” building the worst architecture of the decade; TripAdvisor users, as a barometer of the public, have by contrast hailed the ROM as Toronto’s third best attraction.

“When the Crystal opened, it almost felt like a 50-50 love-hate thing,” recalled Bruce Kuwabara of KPMB Architects. “I’m not sure whether anything’s changed.”

Of course, one doesn’t project a spiky glacier over Bloor St. with discretion in mind.

When the $416-million Renaissance ROM project launched initially, the goals were to boost annual attendance from 750,000 to 1.3 million to 1.6 million; to greatly expand the museum’s gallery and public space and, well, to make a statement with sufficient volume to reverberate across the city and beyond.

Of the three finalists — the other two submissions were from Italian architect Andrea Bruno and Bing Thom Architects — it was Libeskind’s that most vociferously announced the ROM’s status as a contemporary, or even daring, cultural institution.

“Libeskind’s design was that one idea that could fundamentally transform our city, both physically and symbolically,” recalled Rob Pierce, the chair of the ROM board of governors.

The construction was no small feat. The “Crystal” is actually five interlocking prismatic structures affixed to the original 1914 Darling & Pearson museum via only the bridges that link them. With its glass and frosty aluminum exterior, Studio Libeskind took inspiration from the ROM’s mineralogy galleries and aimed to create a “luminous beacon,” CEO Carla Swickerath writes via email.

Others merely see, for better or worse, audacity for its own sake.

“It’s looking for attention and that’s quite clearly what that project is all about,” said Marco Polo, former editor of Canadian Architect magazine and professor in Ryerson University’s department of architectural science.

“I would say, generally speaking, we’ve moved away from that way of thinking, but it was very much a project of its time when that kind of spectacle was part of the game of international architecture.”

Aside from the esthetics of its metal-origami exterior, other critics focused their attention on the confusing layout imposed by the renovation, as well as more philosophical concerns about whether a museum’s design or collection should be its focal point.

“It’s a very challenging building to be in and to navigate. It basically disrupted the clarity of the neoclassical layout of the original museum,” said Kuwabara, who frequents the building and sent his kids to camp there. “He (Libeskind) thinks that the sloping of the floors is an act of disruption that literally destabilizes you, so that you’re walking up and off-balance a bit.

“I don’t know how challenging you want the world to be,” he added. “But some of the best exhibitions I’ve seen are in very classical buildings or in very contemporary buildings like the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art.”

Well, the ROM has recently addressed another continual knock on Libeskind’s rock: an overwhelming entrance area that feels, as Richard Sommer, dean of the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, puts it, “like you’re going through the turnstiles on the way to a sports game.”

The museum recently announced a plan to reopen and revitalize its heritage Weston Entrance, which has been closed since the debut of the Crystal. Critics have seized on this as a tacit acknowledgement of the Libeskind design’s functional shortcomings, but ROM director and CEO Josh Basseches says the decision is a response to the museum’s ever-growing popularity.

“People say, ‘Oh, well, that must mean you don’t think that the Crystal entrance was successful?’ My answer is the opposite: the Crystal entrance is tremendously successful and it’s in part because of that attendance that reviving that second entrance is so important.”

How popular? Well, buoyed by a popular Chihuly exhibit and the new “Out of the Depths: The Blue Whale Story,” the ROM drew 1.35 million visitors for the fiscal year ending March 31. That’s the most in the museum’s history and places the ROM within North America’s Top 10 most-visited museums, Basseches says.

Whether that increase in visitors justifies the museum’s investment in its expansion is another matter. The financial burden of the Crystal is well documented and, as of March 31, the ROM was managing a debt of $26 million.

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The fact that adjustments are being made only 10 years after the ROM’s renovation, however, is hardly unprecedented. The museum’s award-winning Terrace Galleries opened in 1984 to sufficient fanfare that Queen Elizabeth II made the trip. They were torn down roughly two decades later.

So the Crystal’s aluminum anniversary might not be the right time for appraisal. If nothing else, Toronto might benefit from taking a longer view.

“You have to wonder about the attitude we take towards the architecture that came before us,” Polo said. “How do you rejuvenate these projects without necessarily obliterating what had come before? Moving the main lobby from Queen’s Park Circle to Bloor St. seemed like a very important idea at the time and now we’re saying to move it back. That’s a very short lifespan.

“We need to be a little bit more thoughtful about how radically we alter decisions that were made only one generation earlier.”

The ROM: 10 Years Later

The Academic: Richard Sommer, dean of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto

“Among (Libeskind’s) projects, that would not be one I’m a huge fan of. I understand the power of a large sculptural gesture in a city. But I think the conception of a museum as a Crystal is a misfit, because a museum is primarily a series of interior chambers and experiences. The display of artifacts cannot occur in a giant glass building. The Crystal Palace was for plants. So I think there’s a misfit between the ambitions of the project and the function it’s ultimately had to serve. But I think the ambition to make something bold that broke away from the typical architecture in Toronto was laudable.”

The Architect: Studio Daniel Libeskind principal/CEO Carla Swickerath

“Architecture is a public art. We always listen with great interest when people are passionately talking about architecture — it is not always the case. The success of a design is not judged by the opinion of the day; architecture is always being designed for the future. We judge the success of a project on how it communicates its mission, on how well it answers the aspiration and vision of the client, and how well it meets their functional needs. The ROM is Canada’s most visited museum and as an institution it is tremendously successful, but for us we measure the success of a project on how people respond to and use it, particularly how children interact with the building.”

The Museum: Josh Basseches, ROM director and CEO

“There’s always a ‘wow’ factor. Whether you love the building or hate it, people respond to it. It’s a dynamic piece of architecture that captures people’s attention. If you were to Google anything like iconic Toronto architecture or most beautiful museums in the world, many of the articles would highlight the ROM. In fact, I think in many ways it was because of the Crystal and what it conveyed to me about the museum and what the museum’s leadership wanted to do that I ended up coming to the ROM (in 2016). Myself, I’m a big fan of the Crystal.”

Facts and Figures

The Crystal’s exterior is 25 per cent glass and 75 per cent aluminum-cladding strips.

Each steel beam, ranging from one to 25 metres, was lifted one by one to its specific angle.

3,500 tons of steel and 38 tons of bolts were used to create the skeleton.

The ROM’s kickoff party was headlined by a 75-minute concert featuring K’naan, Deborah Cox, Jann Arden and David Foster.

986,171 visitors came through the ROM in its 2007/08 fiscal year.

Renaissance ROM allowed the ROM to double the number of artifacts and specimens on public display.

The renovation provided over 300,000 square feet, or 26 new and renovated galleries and public spaces (an increase of 25 per cent).