Lisa Rochon, in an article you’ll have to Google-news for by title (embarrasingly: “Raw metal is a major turn-on”), writes:
Fronting the redevelopment of the Royal Ontario Museum in downtown Toronto is a massive steel structure that is raw and mysterious and dirty…. Dark, rough to the touch, heavy enough to crush a man, steel is rarely left exposed. It’s easy to figure out why: It might upset our urbane sensibilities…. During the year that it took to raise up the structure, the workers started to feel the steel come alive. One enormous face in the shape of an X wears bolts like jewellery on a giant….There’s too much to distract an audience looking upon an integrated truss system whereby 3,000 pieces of steel (each weighing about three tons) have been miraculously joined together. […]
A restrictive fire code is often to blame for the architect’s penchant for covering up steel. The truth is that a steel structure painted in tumescent paint meets the code…. At the ROM, the last structural steel beam went in last week at the museum’s topping-off ceremony. The iron workers have gone home. Cherish this moment at the ROM. Visit it like public art.
So we did a drive-by of this sodomizing and parasitizing amyloid plaque.
