If you build it . . .

TIMOTHY TAYLOR

Architect Brian Brisbin's Royal Ontario Museum condo tower died a public death earlier this month. Disagreement between architects and end users is not uncommon, of course. Kitchen renovation or museum expansion, there are certain organic tensions between program and envelope. But public embrace of the ROM's south-end proposal wasn't helped by the fact that project proponents were completely unintelligible at times. As Lisa Rochon reported in this newspaper of these (proponents') descriptions, the 46-floor "campanile" would be "iconic" yet "so light and ethereal as to be invisible." People might not have understood the need for a $50-million penthouse, but the "invisible iconic bell-tower" explanation didn't exactly clear things up.