Frank Gehry’s AGO Plagued By Leaking & Other Disasters

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From The Glode & Mail:

The new Frank Gehry-designed Art Gallery of Ontario, designed as an impregnable fortress against the harsh Canadian weather, is already showing cracks in its armour. Recent visitors to the newly reopened and much celebrated Toronto gallery have been shocked to find condensation fogging up and streaming down many of its outer windows, while buckets dot its famed Douglas fir central staircase, catching errant drips.

The leaks and condensation problems at the AGO have dredged up memories of a negligence lawsuit that ensnared its architect, Frank Gehry, in late 2007 after another of his designs, at MIT, became cracked, leaky and mouldy. When word of the dispute reached AGO director and CEO Matthew Teitelbaum that November, he said he was confident the newly renovated Gallery would be “impermeable” and ready for the challenging weather of downtown Toronto.

Via C-Monster which was via ArtsJournal

This reminds me of the fates of other modernist buildings, like Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, which suffered from leaky roofs and other water damage, all of which undermined the purity of the aesthetic. I guess water is the bane of modernist (or in this case, post-modernist) architecture.

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