Royal Ontario Museum Musée royal de l'Ontario

@archpics twitter account tweets architecture pictures. The picture below, of a Canadian museum, caught my eye.

From Wikipedia:

"The new main entrance to the Royal Ontario Museum, Daniel Libeskind's The Crystal, first opened in 2007.^[30] The Deconstructivist crystalline form is clad in 25 percent glass and 75 percent aluminium, sitting on top of a steel frame. The Crystal's canted walls do not touch the sides of the existing heritage buildings, but are used to close the envelope between the new form and existing walls. These walls act as a pathway for pedestrians to travel safely across "The Crystal".

The building's design is similar to some of Libeskind's other works, notably the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre, and the Fredric C. Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum.^[31] The steel framework was manufactured and assembled by Walters Inc. of Hamilton, Ontario. The extruded anodized aluminium cladding was fabricated by Josef Gartner in Germany: the only company in the world that can produce the material. The company also provided the titanium cladding for Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.^[26]

The overall aim of The Crystal is to provide openness and accessibility, seeking to blur the lines between the threshold linking the public area of the street and the more private area of the museum. The goal is to act as an open threshold where people and artifacts animate the space. The main lobby is a three-story high atrium, named the Hyacinth Gloria Chen Crystal Court.^[32] The lobby is overlooked by balconies and flanked by the J.P. Driscoll Family Stair of Wonders and the Spirit House, an interstitial space formed by the intersection of the east and west crystals that is intended as a space of emotional and physical diversion.^[33]

On 1 June 2007, the Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, attended the architectural opening of the "Michael Lee-Chin Crystal".^[34] This caused controversy because public opinion had been divided concerning the merits of its angular design. On its opening, Globe and Mail architecture critic Lisa Rochon complained that "the new ROM rages at the world," was oppressive, angsty, and hellish, while others (perhaps championed by the architecture critic at the competing Toronto Star, Christopher Hume) hailed it as a monument.^[35]Some critics have gone as far as ranking it as one of the ten ugliest buildings in the world.^[36] The project also experienced budget and construction time over-runs,^[37] and drew comparisons to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao for using so-called "starchitecture" to attract tourism.^[38]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Ontario_Museum#The_Crystal