Curves in All the Right Places. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. May 2019.
Curves in All the Right Places II. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. May 2019.
Frank Gehry designed staircase at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
I visited the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) specifically to see this Frank Gehry creation. I went with my friend Matthew (an incredibly talented painter, http://www.matthewcarver.net/home) and he told me that Gehry actually grew up a stones throw away from the gallery. Gehry and Partners renovated the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2008 and one signature piece of the restoration was this beautiful wooden staircase. The spiral bursts up from the first floor, breaks through the glass covered courtyard, and into the other contemporary gallery floors of the museum. This section connecting the second and third floor is my favorite perspective. From this particular point of view, you can see that the railing keeps curving up higher as someone walks up and instead of becoming parallel with the floor. In this way, if you look over the railing as you ascend or descend, your view of the courtyard disappears in some steps and then returns in others. It is meant to mimic your peekaboo line of sight as if you were riding a wave.
From the view below, the staircase, to me, looks like a piece of ribbon being spun off to one side, tilting off kilter, and adding a bit of movement to the wooden structure.
