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Is it god or the devil that’s in the details? Gustave Flaubert believed it was the deity. His aphorism to that effect was often quoted by architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier (or Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, if you want to be formal). Frank Gehry must have had it in mind, too, when he was finalizing his design for the revamped Art Gallery of Ontario.
With the November 14 reopening date only days away, workers are hard at it to finish the dramatic structure on the Dundas Street side of the AGO that somewhat resembles a glass Zeppelin. As they used a crane with a sucker attachment to temporarily remove one of the immense panes of glass on Friday, there was a sharp crack and a corner broke off. What do you reckon a piece like that must cost to replace? It’s not something they could get cut at the nearest window supply store.
Be that as it may, several panes in the glass curtain wall (it’s not really a Zeppelin, but you knew that) have notches cut in their upper corners. They’re to allow the support wires for the streetcar power lines to be attached to the building. It’s a mundane reason, but the sort of essential detail the devil would make an architect overlook—that even with a $254 million arts project, you have to remember to keep the transit running.
Photos by Bill Taylor/Torontoist
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I don't think that piece was being temporarily removed; it was badly damaged when they installed the steel for the streetcar wires, as were approximately 50% of the other notched pieces. It is more likely that they were worried about bad publicity of chunks of laminated glass fell on patrons at the opening, and removed the pane before it could do any damage. We will see several more of these come down when they begin to replace the glazing (which can take up to 12 weeks to manufacture and ship, depending on where it's coming from).
God I miss Toronto.
Sometimes I love the cables we have zipping overhead, other times I think they make the city look really really shitty. Hydro poles and wires, mostly.
Sam Javanrouh makes it look quite nice, t-rek:
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/08/07/29/
But he has the ability to make everything beautiful.
acostain is right. i biked by a few weeks ago and noticed all these long panes with thin cracks right through the middle. i biked by today and saw a crew and a half- 20-25 dudes working out front. so they've been in the process of replacing.
on another note, while biking by today, one guy on the crew there was using a medium/lrg timmy's cup as a mould to pour concrete into it. if i wasn't in a rush i coulda stuck around to watch what he was going fashion out of that.
It's not the streetcar wires which are that ugly, but the fat wooden hydro poles carrying many wires with those frames mounted on the poles to hold the individual wires, and the occasional transformers or other infrastructure mounted overhead. That's ugly, not the slender streetcar wires.
on another note, while biking by today, one guy on the crew there was using a medium/lrg timmy's cup as a mould to pour concrete into it. if i wasn't in a rush i coulda stuck around to watch what he was going fashion out of that.
Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to see it. It should be one of the peices on display when the AGO opens back up.