Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Five huge asymmetrically overlapping forms made of glass, aluminium and steel rise above the classic Victorian-style building of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). A total of 5,000 square metres extra space on four floors has been created for the collections of world cultures and natural history. The inspiration for the unusual form of the extension, which brings to mind a crystal, was the museum's mineral collection, said Libeskind in an interview with the Canadian newspaper "Globe and Mail".

The museum extension called the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal already had a first prize in its pocket before the official opening: the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction awarded the prize for its innovative design. In fact the Crystal is one of the most technically ambitious construction projects in North America. In the new extension there is as good as no straight wall. The five interlaced aluminium and glass prisms support themselves, and although they appear to be built directly on and over the old ROM wing, apart from a few corridors for visitors there is no direct connection between the buildings. However, there is also criticism: some architecture experts find the fault that the Libeskind design appears like a foreign body in Toronto's urban landscape, others think it robs the quality of the listed building of the original museum. Even Toronto's mayor seems to be among the critics: the giant crystal is "interesting" said David Miller ambiguously in an interview; arguably he would divide the citizens.

The wing is named after the Canadian businessman Michael Lee-Chin, who gave around 30 million Canadian dollars for the building. In total the modern wing and further renovations to the ROM cost around 279 million Canadian dollars (187.2 million euros). The ROM in Toronto was founded in 1914 and repeatedly extended over the last century. It is Canada's largest natural history museum with a collection of six million exhibits made up of art, archaeology and natural sciences. The Libeskind idea came through the international submission procedure against 51 competing designs. The architect sent his design from Berlin to Canada by express post on eleven paper serviettes. His plans convinced the jury and the museum director, William Thorsell, who found Libeskind's design "wonderful, amusing, creative, spirited and cheeky."