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The Crystal

The glass thing everyone argues about, seen from the crew side.

Five intersecting prisms, a lot of structural steel, and roughly twenty-five percent more glass than the architect's first sketch. It opened in 2007 and people have argued about it ever since. Half of Toronto thinks it looks like a crashed spaceship. The other half thinks it's the only interesting thing on Bloor. Both are defensible.

I worked inside it for eleven years. Three things the public never sees: the glass is on a cleaning cycle (interior weekly, exterior rope-access twice a year), the temperature swings hard in July, and the floor panels sit on adjustable pedestals because the structure flexes. Once a year we went around with a wrench and re-levelled a few. If you hear a faint click under your feet in the Crystal, that's the floor settling, not something breaking.

Does it work as a museum? Mostly. The Crystal gives you spectacular sightlines and terrible wall space — a glass prism has very little continuous wall, and museums need wall. That's why so many of the galleries use free-standing white partitions. Those aren't design, they're a workaround.

A great building to walk through, an awkward building to hang a painting in.

If you want the photo that makes it look good, stand on Bloor across the road, near the subway entrance, around 4 pm in winter when the interior lights are on and the sky is still blue. Everybody takes the shot from directly underneath and gets a picture of a grey wall.

Admission, including the Crystal, is sold by the museum — their homepage is here. I don't sell anything.