In Toronto, a Gehry makeover plan

Architect Frank Gehry unveiled plans Wednesday for a glass and titanium renovation of this city’s premier art gallery, promising to transform the existing “austere” structure into a more open and welcoming building.

The $150-million project, to be completed by the fall of 2007, will boost the Art Gallery of Ontario’s space for art by about 40%.

Gehry, best known for the wavelike titanium Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the recently opened Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, was born in Toronto and grew up just blocks from the downtown location of the AGO, the eighth-largest art gallery in North America.

Gehry said he chose titanium because it will glow golden on a dull Toronto winter day.