Inspired by the past, informed by the present andaspiring towards the future. Introducing KINGToronto by Westbank and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

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When our partner Michael Emory atAllied reached out and asked us to look atthe nearly 600 feet of frontage he hadassembled over 10 years on King StreetW in Toronto, it immediately struck usthat this site deserved somethingextraordinary. To design the project,Bjarke Ingels and his team at BIG camefirst to mind, as we had been looking foran opportunity to work together inToronto for some time. Allied was equallyenthusiastic about that starting point.

I always had a fascination with Habitat67, well before I was actually able to see it inperson. I think it began with my interest inthe ideals behind the kibbutz and building acommunity. We thought of this project as away to demonstrate how architecture canmeet this challenge and, hopefully, oncompletion, that will be its test: canarchitecture bring people together? In manyrespects, I think the project has the potentialto be more successful than Habitat 67,which after all, was an experiment built onan island in the middle of a river. Here, wehave the opportunity to infill within analready vibrant, successful neighbourhood.

King West is one of Canada’s truly greatneighbourhoods. Walkable, interspersedwith parks and amenities, enjoying access totransit and a unique character made up ofan eclectic mix of heritage and a fine-graintypology. At a different scale, using a variety

of ways to extend nature, we have managedto create a village green at the heart of ourproject and in the surrounding landscape.

The other interesting aspect of thisproject is the inspiration from Maison deVerre, in Paris, which led us to explorethe use of glass block both on thebuilding façade and within the project,playing with reflectivity, translucency andtransparency to create a luminescentproject that changes with the light.Building upon the success of VancouverHouse and our adoption of the principalof Gesamtkunstwerk, we have once againtaken up the challenge of creating thetotal work of art. It was throughVancouver House, our first project withBjarke Ingels, that I first discovered theword and philosophy behindGesamtkunstwerk, and embraced it as aguiding philosophy for all of our projects,current and future. We realized that,above all, our work expresses theintegration of art and architecture, whichwe hope will elevate our projects tobecome living sculptures and total worksof art. Today, this concept continues tomanifest itself in our projects in new andinteresting ways, no better than here withwhat we are calling KING Toronto.

We are also really excited about thechance to work with Public Work, theyoung, talented landscape architect who

HOW ARCHITECTURECAN BRING PEOPLE TOGETHERAt its heart, KING Toronto seeks to provide a village greenBy Ian Gillespie, Founder, Westbank

BIG things are coming to King West.

KING STREETREIMAGINED

Habitat 67 provided inspiration for KING Toronto.

has stepped up to meet the challenge ofbringing nature into the urbanenvironment. I think the landscape designon this project may be the best in thecountry. Finally, KING Toronto is also aproject that is resonating strongly withinthe public discourse. We will be puttingon our next exhibition onsite in Toronto,within our BIG-designed 2016

Serpentine Pavilion called Unzipped.This project and this conversation areamong the ways we are helpingcontribute to a dialogue aroundurbanism and the opportunities of usingarchitecture to create community inToronto, a wonderful city that isconsidered amongst the most vibrant inthe world today.

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QQ&Awith BJARKE INGELS

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The night before being interviewed, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels was surrounded byautograph-seeking fans at the end of a talk at Roy Thompson Hall. Alongsidedeveloper Ian Gillespie, founder of Westbank, and writer/artist Douglas Coupland,Ingels told a nearly packed house about designing KING Toronto, a new developmentfeaturing heaving peaks of greenery-covered cubes set to break ground in one of thecity’s heritage districts.

The architect behind such buildings as the spiraling Danish pavilion at the 2010World Expo, the ramps and terraces of Copenhagen’s 8 House, the twisting tower ofVancouver House and the new Telus Tower in Calgary, Ingels and his BIG group ofarchitects are recognized worldwide for their urban designs.

So how does he feel about the term “starchitect”?“Nobody’s in love with the term,” Ingels says. “It sounds pretentious no matter who’s

saying it, right?”The only good that can come from such a moniker, he continues, is thatit means the work of certain architects “has caught the interest of the public, so muchthat people take an interest in what they do and what they do to our cities. That’sprobably a good thing.”

Historically, says Ingels, people have seldom been engaged with architecture, apartfrom the idea that the past was better and more beautiful. “The more people have an interestin architecture and architects, the more they’ll be able to form informed opinions,”he says,“and have a meaningful discussion about the cities we want to live in.”

Since it was announced two years ago, the KING Toronto project Ingels designed forWestbank has had both passionate defenders and detractors.The strange thing is both sides

THE INTEGRATION OFART AND ARCHITECTURE

They were lined up around the cornerand all the way down King Street outsideRoy Thomson Hall, but not for asymphony concert or visiting soprano.Nearly every seat in the hall one eveningin late October was filled to listen to adeveloper, an architect and a writer/artisttalk about a new condo development.

It seems the building boom in Torontocan not only dominate blogs, newspapersand dinner table chat, but can also fill adowntown concert hall on short notice.

The buzz about the collaborationbetween Toronto’s Allied Properties,Vancouver’s Westbank and Danisharchitect Bjarke Ingels began whenrenderings of the King Street Westproject were released two years ago. Yet

many of the people filling Roy ThomsonHall were drawn by Unzipped, thepavilion designed by Ingels for London’sSerpentine Gallery in 2016, recentlyrebuilt on the future site of the newdevelopment to help win over Toronto.

Roy Thomson Hall filled to capacity to listen not to an orchestrabut to a developer, an architect and an artist

Westbank founder Ian Gillespie beganby praising Arthur Erickson’s RoyThomson Hall, a radical design thatbecame one of the city’s iconic buildings,and describing how he has a similarambition for KING Toronto.

Gillespie doesn’t focus his company’smany ground-breaking projects, such asVancouver House in his hometown or theTelus Tower in Calgary, but talks insteadabout the public art Westbank hascommissioned to complement its projects.Projected on the screen were images ofDiana Thater’s multicoloured light sculptureon Vancouver’s Shaw Tower, and ZhangHuan’s Rising, the fantastical sculpture infront of Toronto’s Shangri-La Hotel.

Over the years, he says his company has

made the “transition from developmentcompany to cultural company.” Gillespiespends up to 20 per cent of his time onpublic art. Projects like KING Torontoblur boundaries, he said: “This piece is bothart and architecture.”

“This is Toronto’s time.Take it and demand it.”

— Ian Gillespie

From left to right:Bjarke Ingels, Ian Gillespie, Douglas Coupland

at Roy Thomson Hall

The Danish architect talks about his love for Torontoand his distaste for the term ‘starchitect’

Permeability is key to design.

have been referencing the same things about the building: its greenery-covered complex ofinterlocking boxes or “pixels,” as Ingels describes them, and its use of glass blocks instead of,say,Toronto’s venerable red brick.The architect admits he wasn’t surprised.

“When I started studying architecture, people would always ask, ‘Can you tell me,why are all modern buildings so boring?’ I think everybody has this feeling that it usedto be charming, but you have to go a hundred years back, and now it’s all glass towers onretail podia. So, I think there are a lot of people who think you could try harder, andothers who find it disconcerting when things look different from what they’re used to.Because you’ll see that maybe the buildings that don’t cause a lot of counter reactionalso don’t inspire a lot of love.”

Ingels had just come from seeing a full-sized mock-up of a portion of the buildingthat morning and was clearly pleased. He says what has been lost in all the concernabout his design choices is how the building will look up close — and how different itwill look from any other glass tower.

“There are no hundred-foot facades. The longest facade is 10 feet, because it’salways stepping or pixelating, but even those surfaces are going to have so muchvariation because of the glass brick.”

Apart from the public reaction, Ingels and Westbank have had to convince thecity’s planners a complex such as KING Toronto, so visibly different from anythingbuilt here until now, will complement and even enhance the heritage district whereit’s being constructed.

“When you work for a city you have to champion the past as much as you have tochampion the future,” says Ingels. “But you absolutely have to champion the future. Whoare the most important people in the city? The children, because they are the future, andyou have to make it possible for them to have an impact and not lock them up in what weused to do. I think the same is true with architecture.”

As it’s currently configured, KING Toronto will incorporateseveral red brick heritage buildings into its undulating of cubesand vegetation, in addition to public art, an interior courtyardand a new public park. Ingels has come to understand theimportance the city places on preserving its streetscapes, andthinks he’s struck the right balance.

“But you have to tread carefully, when you have existingqualities like we do at King Street,” he says. “There should bea way where the two can successfully coexist. In myperspective, by not confusing what’s old and what’s new,but making sure they successfully coexist, you preserve thepast and reinvent it and contribute something towardsthe future.”

Ingels remembers coming to Toronto in 2003 forthe first time at the beginning of his career to workon a project with local design guru Bruce Mau.He’s had some time to contemplate the city’sidentity, and compares it sympathetically to hisown home.

“Toronto has this interesting mix of classic,North American east coast city with somekind of combination of an Anglo-Saxonindustrial heritage with some skyscrapers,combined with this really, really diversepopulation. As a Dane you relate a lot toCanada for a lot of reasons, as this sociallydemocratic, environmentally oriented,somewhat self-ironic northern countrysitting on top of a very aggressive bigbrother — there’s some sort ofkindred alignment there.”

Architect Bjarke Ingels followedGillespie and began by talking aboutMoshe Safdie’s Habitat apartments inMontreal, probably one of Canada’s mostfamous modernist buildings.

“Why,” the Danish architect wonderedaloud, “didn’t it have a greater impact?”

Ingels dove into explaining hisbuilding, from the inspiration he pickedup from Safdie’s Habitat, notably in theroom-sized “pixels” that make up itsstructure, to the quest of BIG, hisarchitecture firm, to blend the buildingwith the King Street Westneighbourhood and the heritagebuildings it will incorporate.

He walked the audience through thestreet level of KING Toronto, from thecave-like opening on King Street to thenew park that will be built onWellington, indicating where public art— still to be commissioned — will beplaced throughout the spaces. “We triedto maintain permeability,” he explained,showing photos of the walls of glassblock that will be a major part of thecondo complex.

Demonstrating how each living unitcan be reconfigured, Ingels described howthe evolution of the building’s layout fromsimple rectangles to a little mountainrange dictates the unique character ofevery unit. He asked a question manycondo shoppers have likely askedthemselves: “If people are different, whyare so many apartments the same?”

Douglas Coupland, author ofGeneration X, JPod and other novels, andcreator of countless public art works,recalled his mother’s skepticism of publicart, saying her voice still rings in his head.He ran through his own catalogue of work,inspired by everyday objects like

Laurentian pencil crayons, fishing tackle,tires and toy soldiers, and admitted nothinghe’s done is ever really finished, since thepublic creates a personal relationship withart the artist can’t control.

He talked about the light sculpture hecreated for Westbank’s Telus Tower inCalgary, and after mentioning he’ll behelping select public art for KINGToronto, gave the city a compliment itrarely hears: “Toronto has the best publicart system going.”

Before the evening ended with acluster of young architecture fansconverging on the stage to get autographsfrom Gillespie, Ingels and Coupland,there was a group chat where Ingelsechoed Coupland’s thoughts on public artfrom an architect’s perspective: “The greatthing about the city as arena is that theartist can do whatever interesting thingthey want, but once you put it out there,the public can change the meaning.”

Gillespie closed by applauding theinterest the city has in new developmentsand heritage preservation, emphasizinghow the two meet in KING Toronto.

“This is Toronto’s time,” he told thecrowd. “Take it and demand it.”

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THE CIVIC GROUNDThe courtyard is the social heart of amid-block connection that facilitatesmovement through the district andenhances the sense of discovery. Varyingfrom east to west, distinct blue and greenspaces reinforce two unique atmospheres,from vibrant retail plaza with dynamicwater feature to a contemplative greengathering space featuring the unexpected:mature specimen trees and massive rockswithin the urban block. A mineraltapestry defines the courtyard floor. Thisurban-scaled, terrazzo-like paving, usingdiverse stone slabs, features a scale-shifting pattern that diffuses from a gridto organic, bringing diverse moments ofcolour and light and anchoring the glassbuilding to a primordial floor.

THE GLASS AND GREEN FAÇADEClimbing vines will extend greeneryacross a cable-mesh system,complementing the glass-block buildingfaçade. Seasonally changing green swathswill soften hard edges and bring life tothe skin of the building, rooting thisluminous mass to the ground. The‘greening of glass’ will reinforce the wholeform as a ‘soft podium,’ offering a newimage of nature within the dense city andbringing thousands of seasonallychanging textures to the cityscape.

THE TERRACES AND ROOFSCAPEA collection of 370 individual gardenterraces form a tapestry of living textures,a collective roofscape that addsbiodiversity to the city. Each privateterrace garden contributes to thecollective landscape by providing soilvolumes to support vines that climb andplants that cascade from terrace planters.The changing vegetal textures of diverseplants soften the peaks, presenting a totallandscape composition.

GREENING ANURBAN LANDSCAPE

Public Work is involved in designingpublic space in rapidly densifying cities,focusing on the quality of humanexperience in our evolving urbanlandscapes. KING Toronto challenged uswith three fundamental questions: Can acity densify without losing its quality oflife and connection to nature? Can themost multi-cultural city in the world findnew built expressions of diversity throughintegrated architectural and botanicalform? Can a project’s public realmenhance the porosity and connectivity ofthe wider historic district and bringvitality to a much larger civic network?

From the start, the project implied alandscape, a new, organic form of mid-riseto counter Toronto’s vertical skyline. Thebuilding massing developed by BIGsuggests a series of peaks and valleys,creating a ‘soft podium’ grounded on KingStreet W. Westbank, Allied and BIG thenasked Public Work to bring the maximumamount of green to the urbanenvironment, and to add a ‘softening’vegetal layer for the pixelated architecturalform – a ‘living skin’ that could harmonizeand support the built form while bringinganother layer of differentiation andtexture to the block. Here was anopportunity to demonstrate urban livingthat is more like inhabiting a landscapethan a condo.

We approached the landscape andpublic realm at three scales: thedomestic unit, the block, and thedistrict. In the public realm we alsoemphasized three primary qualities:diversity of textures and atmosphereswithin a coherent form; leveraging theresilience of the wild through theselection of plants; and, softening thepixel as a complementary gesture.

We sought to create a landscape thatworks at the scale of the individual(resident on terrace garden, public visitor/shopper in courtyard) but combines in acollective garden – a green contribution tothe district and city skyline – while alsoaddressing the deficit of nature in one ofthe densest and most vitalneighbourhoods in the country.

Combining private space with public gardensBy Marc Ryan, Founder, Public Work

GESAMTKUNSTWERKA TOTAL WORK OF ART

Every real estate project is a collaboration, but the best projects come off like a finelychoreographed dance, with every contributor showing up at just the right moment andadding just the right touch. We depend so heavily on the imagination of the architects,the reliability of the engineers, the efficiency of the construction managers and theexpertise and commitment of every individual worker. KING Toronto offered a strongreminder that, with a partner like Allied, we all benefit, as well, from the vision andambition of an excellent city builder.

These learning experiences are endless, and in more than 30 years, Westbank hasbeen tutored by some of the best architects and artists in the world, as well as bybrilliant partners and subject area experts of every kind. In the process, we have addedcapacity and complexity to what we can achieve, always raising our level of ambition.We also have gathered an expanding vocabulary that explains and inspires what we do,and the way we do it.

GESAMTKUNSTWERKOne of the words in that new vocabulary was the German Gesamtkunstwerk: it wascoined by a German philosopher in the 1820s and it translates as “total work of art.”We came across Gesamtkunstwerk while working with architect Bjarke Ingels on ourfirst project together, his remarkable design of Vancouver House, and the word fitperfectly. It illuminated his intention to create an unexpected and completely eleganthigh-rise form, married to a groundplane that melds so well with its surroundings thatit is destined to transform the entire neighbourhood. In an extremely challengingproperty, this was a seamless and coherent solution, a total work of art.

LAYERINGWe were introduced to a second concept while we were working with the greatJapanese architect Kengo Kuma on a Vancouver project on Alberni Street. Kuma isdeeply thoughtful in his application of layering, which in Japanese translates astsumikasane, meaning “to heap on top of.” Let there be no misunderstanding, though,that Kuma-san throws anything down in “heaps.” Rather, he takes delight inconsidering every element, every increment of space or additional piece of material toassure that they all fold together into an optimally realized whole.

Taking these concepts together – and applying them to the development not just ofbuildings but of whole new neighbourhoods, it becomes clear that a total work of artcannot be a stark monolith; rather, it must be a triumph of complementary components– of layers. That was the motivation for our design and our approach to KING Toronto.Instead of an indifferent collection of buildings, Ingels and his team at BIG havedelivered an urban mountain range in glass and greenery. Neither does this new formseek to upstage or overwhelm the heritage buildings on site. On the contrary, BIG’spixelated landscape embraces and complements the existing buildings, and theneighbouring streetscape, as well.

As you turn the pages of this book – ultimately, as you move through the fullyrealized courtyard, lobbies, fine-grained retail, homes and terraces of KING Toronto –you will surely see an intricately, infinitely layered collaboration. When we add theculminating, carefully considered additional layers, the floating public art in thecourtyard and the Ingels-designed Fazioli piano, we anticipate nothing less than a totalwork of art.

KING Toronto aspires to become the result of abalance of art, design and imaginationBy Ian Gillespie

The “greening” of glass offersa new image of nature.

WERKAMTKUNSTGES

Taking inspiration fromdesign in all forms.

KING Toronto will be anurban moutain range in glass and greenery.

Inspired by the past, informed by the present and aspiring towards the future.Introducing KINGToronto byWestbank and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

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