The Building
The dominant feature of the building is the dome, which rises 25.3 meters (83 ft) from the ground, and has an outer diameter of 27.7 meters (91 ft). The dome structure is layered, with an outer waterproofed casing of reinforced concrete 4 centimeters (2.5 inches) thick, and an inner concrete dome that is insulated by a layer of urethane foam.
The projection dome was separate from the outer dome, and was 23 meters (75.4 ft) in diameter. Made of curved aluminum sheets, it was lap jointed to create a continuous spherical surface. The sheets were painted white and perforated with 2.5-millimeter (0.1 inch) holes, which were designed to let sound through and reduced echoes in the cavernous space.
The building had two main entrances: a main entrance at ground level that faced east onto Queen's Park Drive, and a connecting passageway from the Royal Ontario Museum from what used to be the Mineralogy Gallery. Admission to either facility allowed visitors to see exhibits in both buildings, though a Planetarium show cost extra.
Read more about this topic: Mc Laughlin Planetarium
Famous quotes containing the word building:
“There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.”
—Raymond Chandler (18881959)
“... whats been building since the 1980s is a new kind of social Darwinism that blames poverty and crime and the crisis of our youth on a breakdown of the family. Thats what will last after this flurry on family values.”
—Stephanie Coontz (b. 1944)