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Oakridge 

Awarded Future Project of the Year at the World Architecture Awards in 2015 for its innovation and beauty, and named one of CNN’s most anticipated buildings in 2020, Vancouver House has attracted attention from around the world. Set for completion in spring of 2020, the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) designed project includes both high-rise and low rise structures, with the tower rising 59-storeys at the corner of Beach and Howe above 3 additional buildings between the offramps of the Granville Street bridge. Vancouver House includes 375 residential homes, 106 rental homes, as well as new retail, workspace and amenity space, forming the core of a new waterfront community, the Beach District.

The design of any building should be a function of the particular constraints and characteristics of each site and in the case of Vancouver House, the solution that BIG arrived at is very much a direct response its site. To accomodate complex site restrictions, a slender base forms the nine-storey podium, ultimately widening into the residential tower as it rises to meet the sky. 

The net result is a unique building typology for Vancouver. From Vancouver House, to Vancouver's House, this is a project that has become quickly become a part of the city's identity. When the Beach District is complete and Rodney Graham's Spinning Chandelier is illuminating the vibrant public realm beneath the Granville Street Bridge, we hope people everywhere will recognize this as city-building at its best.


Vancouver House

This is our vision of Oakridge:
 
An urban enclave defined in equal terms by its landscape and its people; organized around a nearly 10-acre park with elegant towers extruded organically from the landscape; supporting a quality of life that draws on a past steeped in raw natural beauty to represent a future of social, environmental and cultural abundance. Oakridge will be a crossroads for living, working, connecting, learning, creating and exploring – cultivated by those who want to be part of what’s next. It will be:

- A cultural hub that pays homage to human experience in all its forms;
- 2,600 homes for nearly 6,000 residents;
- Workspace for 3,000 creative professionals;
- More than 300 stores featuring the world’s most distinguished brands;
- A unique culinary experience featuring the best local and global chefs;
- One of Vancouver’s largest community centres;
- Vancouver’s second-largest library;
- A nearly 10-acre park made up of six integrated smaller parks;
- Home to the world-renowned Goh Ballet performing arts academy; and
- An incomparable variety of live music venues.

Oakridge will restore the city – one that celebrates nature as an integral part of who we are and what makes Vancouver one of the most liveable cities in the world. Its organic architecture and comprehensive infrastructure will support an intuitive and serendipitous way of life that evolves constantly, naturally and flexibly. Our vision of Oakridge is a testament to the ability of man and nature to coexist.

A place for life to unfold.


Oakridge

In the heart of Silicon Valley, where the landscape is dominated by self-contained tech campuses and low-density car-oriented urbanism, a major new development is bringing in a team of world-class architects to add a collection of mixed-use projects to downtown San Jose. Concentrating modern workspaces and residences near the growing city’s key amenities and forthcoming regional transportation links, the sustainability-minded development could be the start of an urban revolution in the valley.

Led by the Vancouver-based developer Westbank, the development will feature five new or renovated buildings by Kengo Kuma and Associates, Bjarke Ingels Group, Studio Gang, and James K.M. Cheng Architects. In total, they’ll create about 700 new residences, 5 million square feet of office space, and room for an estimated 40,000 jobs. Westbank CEO Ian Gillespie frames it as a reinvention of Silicon Valley’s urban form.

“When you fly into San Francisco and drive through the valley, you drive past one industrial park after another industrial park after another industrial park,” Gillespie says. Though many of the world’s most influential companies are based there, he says few are really doing much to make their own footprint in the area a positive one. “The largest of them seem to be building tools for communications and at the same time they’re putting everyone in an industrial park and isolating them from the rest of the community,” he says. “I don’t know how that happened. I don’t know where along the lines that people decided that an industrial park was a good way to build a community.”

He’s hoping to counter that trend by building more connected office spaces in the center of San Jose—near San Jose State University, planned BART and high-speed rail stations, and all the existing residential, retail, and cultural spaces in a city that’s expected to grow by 400,000 people by 2035. The five buildings are scattered across the downtown core but focus on providing environmentally friendly architecture that extends onto the street level, with landscaping and pedestrian-centric designs that encourage a more tightly woven urban fabric. Each of the projects will run on electric systems and have net zero carbon emissions, with offsets for both their operational and embodied carbon. Construction has begun on two of the five sites, and the developers recently bought a sixth for what Gillespie hopes will be an ongoing wave of transformative development.

“This is not just about trying to build better performing buildings. That goes without saying, and is a pretty low bar,” Gillespie says. “It’s really around the idea that the entire thing is broken. Starting with the fact that housing is divorced from where people work, from where they work out, from where they hang out, from where they eat, from where they go to school, from how they get to and from, how they meet people.”

What Gillespie is trying to do is insert buildings into the urban environment to fix those things he thinks are broken. In contrast to a more built-up city such as San Francisco, he says, San Jose offered both the space and the potential to make this happen at a large scale. “There is a canvas there where we could really make a meaningful impact relatively quickly,” he says.

The plan is strategically important for downtown San Jose, according to Mayor Sam Liccardo. “If we can pull this off, through all of the extraordinary challenges of this pandemic, it could really transform our city in a blink of an eye, which I would define as about a half a decade,” he says.

Liccardo acknowledges that San Jose is not exactly a hotbed of architectural significance. He says the downtown has a “squatty skyline,” largely due to its proximity to the city’s international airport. “With a few notable exceptions, and those are primarily public buildings, our city is appropriately described as architecturally challenged,” he says. The proposed projects could help change that, both in terms of the city’s skyline and its pedestrian experience. “It will raise the bar for public expectations for what development should do for our urban environment,” Liccardo says.

Gillespie argues that world-class architecture is important to ensuring the project can have a significant impact on the city. He’s pulled in most of these big-name architects for other projects in cities such as Vancouver, Seattle, Toronto, and Tokyo, but this will be Westbank’s first collaboration with Chicago-based Studio Gang.

The firm’s principal, Jeanne Gang, says she was attracted to the project by its ambition but also Gillespie’s focus on social equity and climate issues. The building her firm designed for the development is trying to push some limits on energy efficiency and environmentally sustainable materials. Using mass timber as its main building material, the mid-rise office and retail building has low embodied carbon, and Gang hopes it can serve as proof that mass timber can work at scale. “We really have to make this complete shift towards these newer wood technologies. There’s no option. It’s one of these things that has to be embraced,” she says.

The building features a facade of blocks filled with angled wooden shading, a low-tech but varied way of controlling the amount of direct sunlight coming into the building. Its topographical shape also creates areas for green roofs and planted patio spaces that, though designed before the pandemic, are an even more important feature now. “The idea of indoor-outdoor workspace and more fluidity between inside and outside, especially in a place with a wonderful climate like San Jose, it makes total sense,” says Gang. “It should be mandatory to have outdoor space.”

Amounting to 750,000 square feet, the new building also includes and connects to an existing 1980s office building that Studio Gang is adapting for reuse as a more energy-efficient workspace. This kind of reuse, she says, is an important part of reducing the development’s carbon footprint and helped guide the future-focused design of the new building next door. “It needs to be flexible because there’s always going to be changes,” she says. “We’ve been really honing in on that with the structural system and the quality of the spaces. You could easily imagine this building becoming residential someday.”

This kind of adaptation may become more important as Gillespie’s vision for San Jose takes shape. His initial focus is on adding new and more-urban workspaces to the city to counter Silicon Valley’s industrial park past, but he knows that to truly make the transformation happen, office and residential will have to be better mixed. Future projects, he says, will try to augment the new office buildings he’s building with more residential spaces that can make the downtown core even more of a live-work community. Says Gillespie: “As we dug more and more into the shortcomings and the unique challenges that Silicon Valley has, we came to the realization that if we weren’t adding housing that was equally inspiring and was also net zero, then we’re actually contributing to the problem, not the solution.”

Sprawl ruined Silicon Valley. Can world-class architecture help fix it?

A project by an international developer in Tokyo is in itself a rarity. In the past year, Westbank has completed two, with more in the works. 

Designed in collaboration with world-renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and OSO, founded by two of Kuma’s protégées, The Kita and The Avior, Westbank’s first projects in Tokyo, are redefining luxury, offering a new way of living in the world’s largest global city. 

The Kita and The Avior Set a New Standard for Luxury Residences in Tokyo

Vancouver House Tops CNN's List of Most Anticipated Buildings in 2020

Vancouver artist Rodney Graham’s Spinning Chandelier dazzles under Granville Street Bridge

Bjarke Ingels Group Completes Vancouver House, a Modern Twist on New York’s Flatiron Building

As a preview of what's to come at Vancouver House's Beach District,
Westbank is hosting our 2nd annual Shipping Container Summer Pop-Up
Series at Shaw Tower.

The pop-up runs from June 10th through September 21st. The container will
showcase one vendor at a time, operating daily with varying hours and
durations — pop in often to see who's in the box!

Dipped Doughnuts, Flourgirl Baking, BETH RICHARDS, Tacofino, The Juice Truck &
To Die For Fine Foods, MERcuterie, House Concepts, Ride Cycle Club and more!

Beach District at Vancouver House, set to complete in late 2019, will create a
new food & beverage destination under the Granville St. Bridge in downtown
Vancouver. To complement the existing retail, including a new Fresh Street
Market grocery store and London Drugs, five shipping containers are being
installed on site. These shipping containers will be curated by Westbank and
feature a variety of new and highly sought after culinary delights, fashion and
fitness concepts.

Pop-Up Shipping Container Summer Series 

We welcomed over 3000 guests at our "Made In Italy" event to celebrate the launch of our latest estate offering at Oakridge: The Lissoni Palazzi, a collaboration with renowned Italian Designer Piero Lissoni. The Palazzi are 70 estate homes on the top floors of one of the tallest towers at Oakridge featuring expansive living spaces and stunning views of the Pacific Northwest.

The event showcased the best of Italian design, culture and fashion including a selection of vintage Italian cars. Lamborghini had 10 cars on display, which included a historic Countach and first look at the Lamborghini Huracan Evo. A selection of food vendors — Via Tevere, Giovane, Bella Gelateria, Mr. Arancino, The Cannoli King and Roasted Coffee
treated our guests to Italian food and beverages. Guests were entertained by opera singer Mehlinda Heartt, folk musician Lache Cercel and the Carmelina Cupo Band who performed throughout the event.

Made In Italy

### Not an offering for sale in the Province of British Columbia

Thank you Seattle — we are 50% sold in our first month. 

First Light will bring artistry to the Seattle skyline and luxury, comfort and style to every suite. First Light will bridge Belltown with Seattle’s downtown, offering a fresh take on urban living. 

“First Light is a story of collaboration. This quality of work only happens by bringing together like-minded people with the common goal of producing something extraordinarily good.”
- Ian Gillespie

Visit the First Light Presentation Gallery for an in-person opportunity to visualize the interiors of First Light homes. Open daily from 11am to 5pm at 300 Virginia Street, Seattle.



First Light Seattle 50% Sold Out*

Thank you Vancouver. We are pleased to announce the first residential offerings at Oakridge is now sold out. We would like to also extend our sincerest thank to Sergio, his team, and the team at B&B Italia for joining us on this journey.

__The Palazzi by Piero Lissoni x Oakridge — Launching Now__

The Palazzi by Piero Lissoni x Oakridge represents the ultimate residential offering within what is simply one of the most sophisticated and layered developments in the world. They are also, for Westbank, the continuation of a long tradition of bringing the most refined residences available to Canada, the United States and Tokyo.
We have designed 70 estates on the floors 28-41 that Piero’s team have customized to take advantage of the more luxurious space. These homes will enjoy all of the attributes that come from living on top of the cultural hub of the city.

Visit The Sales Atelier at the Unwritten Exhibition at Oakridge Centre. 
Open during mall hours.

Learn more at 
[OAKRIDGEVANCOUVER.CA](https://oakridgevancouver.ca)

Castiglia x Oakridge is Sold Out

Thank You Toronto — King Toronto is over 50% Sold and we are planning the final release of West Mountain Homes. 

King Toronto is a story of collaboration and a testament to what can be achieved through partnerships and shared values. These values have created the foundation on which we have been able to foster innovation, creativity, sustainability, artistry and city-building.

Our partnership with Allied and BIG began with TELUS Sky in Calgary. Today, we are building upon the relationships we have formed to expand our work and bring a new project to Toronto, with even greater ambition.

[http://kingtoronto.com/](http://kingtoronto.com/)

King Toronto — Final Release

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Arbor is comprised of two buildings: a mass timber structure and the adaptive reuse of the existing Davidson Building, providing over 500,000 sf of workspace and dramatically reducing the carbon emissions and embodied carbon of  
the project.

Designed to maximize connections to nature and the outdoors, through a mix of indoor, outdoor and semi-outdoor spaces, Arbor takes its name from the structure it is conceived as — a framework that is light on the earth yet provides robust support for a diverse ecosystem of healthy, inspiring habitats for  creative work. 

Arbor

Broadway & Alma is a new rental project on Vancouver’s West Side, bordered by Kitsilano and Point Grey, and our first project to be completely designed by the boutique Vancouver-based design firm, Leckie Studio. A young, award-winning interdiscipinary practice whose past focus has centred on beautifully-designed single family homes, our collaborations with Leckie Studio to date have created some of their first multi-family residential designs.

We are committed to making a significant long term contribution to Vancouver’s rental housing supply and this project will bring approximately 164 secured rental units, with 20% of the residential floor area for to moderate income households. 

Broadway & Alma

The Energy Hub is designed to complement the adjacent Bank of Italy building also by BIG, while creating a mix of retail, rental residential and workspace with expansive floorplates. Connecting two alleys on either side of the site, an arch cuts through the project creating an expanded public realm and urban room that will activate the entire surrounding neighborhood. The Energy Hub’s name comes from the two kinds of energy it creates: the photovoltaic panels on the louvers and the roof harness energy from the sun and the public realm generates human energy, from the connections and interactions it helps foster. 

The Energy Hub

The Orchard residential building (409 South 2nd Street) is part of a two project campus, composed of workspace and residential. The residential building is designed to integrate and celebrate the existing mid-century Bo Town restaurant structure on the site at the corner of San Salvador and S 2nd Street. The building adopts an L-shaped plan designed to both maximize the efficiency of its program and highlight the heritage of the restaurant, with its iconic folded roof and populuxe, space age-inspired elements. The residential building includes approximately 520 market rental homes. 

The Orchard Residential

The Orchard Workspace has been designed to allow for ultimate efficiency, flexibility and modularity, integrating nature throughout with a vertical orchard. The project is comprised of over 1.3M sf of workspace, adjacent to a separate residential building.

Through a collaboration with WRNS Studio, the design of 300 South 1st Street has evolved to be broken into two towers above a low podium which offers over 1.3M sf of workspace with expansive floorplates of up to 100,000 sf. We feel that this design change will provide a variety of offerings to the market and also create a unique opportunity for a rooftop theatre / amenity space. 

The Orchard Workspace

A historic downtown landmark, Bank of Italy is one of the most iconic buildings in San Jose. With a rich history based upon Amadeo Giannini's legacy as the founder of Bank of America,the building is distinct in both appearance and location. Bank of Italy's conversion will restore and celebrate its historic architecture while bringing new, inspiring workspace and retail designed to reenergize downtown San Jose, and create a unique destination in the city. 

The tallest tower between San Francisco and L.A. until the 1980s, Bank of Italy is a statement building in the heart of Downtown San Jose whose podium offers some of the most high profile retail space in the city. We’re interested in using this project to bring something different to the city. We envision a mix of workspace, retail and cultural space as a way of bringing creativity to the built environment and also an amazing amenity for downtown San Jose.

Bank of Italy

Designed to elevate and celebrate nature in downtown San Jose, Park Habitat is composed of workspace, retail and a museum, interwoven with vegetation and a verdant landscape. Bordered by the Convention Center, the Tech Interactive, San Jose Civic Center and Plaza de Cesar Chavez, the project blends deep sustainability, natural elements and an expansive public realm, to form a connection point and an anchor for a cultural district in the city.

Park Habitat

We have been working with the City of Vancouver for a number of years to reimagine the zoning in this area, in recognition that the very nature of industry has fundamentally changed. It was important to maintain the industrial land-use but at the same time, our industrial-zoned land base needed to be retooled to respond and adapt to a changing industry. So, we teamed up with Gregory Henriquez, also the architect on TELUS Garden, Woodward’s and many other projects across the country, to design workspace for the creative economy. 

Now, four years later, we have produced Main Alley, a new creative economy campus in the heart of Mount Pleasant, Vancouver’s creative and technology district.

Main Alley reflects our commitment to playing a meaningful role in the transformation of Vancouver’s creative economy and help shape one of the city’s pivotal neighborhoods. We’re creating a new campus in one of North America’s fastest growing innovation hubs on one of North America’s coolest streets, curated with the vision for the future of this vibrant, creative community.