The Globe and Mail

It's hard, aggressive and in your face. It cantilevers dangerously over the street, shifting the ground from under our feet. Do not expect shelter from the $135-million Michael Lee-Chin crystalline addition to Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum by Daniel Libeskind. Expect the exaltation of one architect, one man, one individual. Expect the stuff of Libeskind: an exile, a brilliant thinker, a marketer with a silver tongue. Come into this person's life, see their triumphs, feel their sorrow — such is the nature of the prurient and morbid explorations of the 21st-century individual. Oprah, Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil, they cannot begin to satisfy our ambition to know, our desire to be exposed. This is my space. Read my Facebook. Here we go again with the exaltation of the individual, except this time a guy decides to assault the street with his architecture. Okay, everybody: Let's try to understand it. First of all, a city as large and complex as Toronto has room for this kind of audacious experiment. There is architectural delirium at the reinvented ROM. And ecstasy, too.