Culture

Our longstanding relationship with Mr. Paolo Fazioli started with perhaps our best known Alberni Street project, the Shangri-La Hotel, Vancouver. The Fazioli piano was installed there over a decade ago and today we have commissioned a dozen additional Fazioli pianos. The piano is the instrument of a larger idea that has woven its way through our practice. It is both a demonstration of the passion that we put into our buildings and a gift to the Architects and Designers of our projects, in the form of a unique design exercise. In the Westbank collaboration with Fazioli, which is regarded as the best piano in the world, the architect is challenged to design a piano that responds to the building typology itself. The process of this design challenge is really interesting for both the designers and ourselves, and with each piano design, we become a little more adventurous. As long as Mr. Fazioli is willing to play along with us we will try and continue to surprise and delight.