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It started out as an impossible idea: to build homes in the sky, housed within a vertical neighbourhood of outdoor spaces, a sense of being one with nature and of belonging in your built environment. To give familiarity to change and an openness, yet with privacy.

When architect Bing Thom first walked the site five years ago, we asked him for pure light, fluidity and a place that could hold within a connection to nature while connecting us to each other. We wanted to change the high-rise typology.

What he gave us will become a defining presence on the Vancouver skyline, as light and ephemeral as it is distinct. The Butterfly returns to the fundamentals of nature, using natural light, natural ventilation and natural forms. Curved glass expands your horizons as far as the eye can see. Sculptural, concrete forms create a façade of waving clouds. Open-air breezeways allow sunlight and stars to shine through. Every third floor holds a tree, each part of your interior garden. Your dining table emerges organically from the kitchen counter, as a gently curving shape that barely touches the ground. Glass panels and semi-transparent curtains allow natural light to flood into your home and shadows scatter, creating ever-changing scenes. Pure white floors, ceilings and glass walls, dissolve structural confines creating the sensation of continuous space and a beautiful state of permanent motion.

With Bing Thom Architects (now Revery Architecture) we have created homes in the sky. Bing Thom was internationally renowned for his architecture, but though he grew up in Vancouver and called our city home, too few know his work or his dedication to creating buildings that uplift and transform the communities of which they form a part. Together, we made a promise that we would fight together for this beauty, against all the forces demanding us to compromise our vision, to create a gift for the city that would speak to our values.

Together we pursued a butterfly-effect made of all the impossibles magnified as powerful possibilities: in the quality of life in our city, in the revival of a key artery in our community, in the restoration of a monument that represents the history of Vancouver in a gentle but powerful contribution to our skyline.

The enormous challenges we were presented with, the newness of the solutions we have found and the meaning we found in bringing this work to life, are all carried with lightness. The impossible has become real, as light and ephemeral as it is protective and cocooned. The impossible has metamorphosed into The Butterfly.

The Butterfly

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


First Light is our first project in Seattle with longtime collaborator architect James Cheng and John Hogan, a Seattle-based artist who works predominantly in glass. The design for First light exemplifies three of the core themes we have been exploring for decades; the design philosophy of layering that we began with architect Kengo Kuma, the natural progression of Gesamtkunstwerk or the total work of art, which we began with Bjarke Ingels at Vancouver House and broadly, the idea of bringing nature back into cities. The resulting project has been completely designed by James Cheng and John Hogan as a work of art in and of itself; integrating art and architecture, infused with nature and deeply layered with many details that reveal themselves subtly throughout.



The second Shangri-La Hotel in Canada and one of the most successful hotels in Toronto, the Shangri-La Toronto developed in partnership by Westbank and Peterson comprises a 202-room hotel and 395 residential homes. 

On the border between the entertainment and financial districts, the homes and hotel suites at the Shangri-La Toronto offer residents and guests the convenience and vibrancy of urban living within 5-star luxury accommodations. Chosen in 2014 by Wallpaper Magazine as the top Urban Hotel in the world, the project offers owners and hotel guests a host of amenities including a pool, fitness centre, function spaces, wellness spa and specialty restaurants, one of which is Momofuku, a three-storey and tri-concept restaurant by lauded New York chef, David Chang. Next door, Soho House Toronto - which has set up a permanent home in a 10,000 square-foot space on Bishops Block inhabits a building dating back to the 1800s. The building, which was originally one of Toronto’s first ever hotels, has been carefully restored brick by brick by Westbank as part of the development.

Public art by international renowned artist Zhang Huan, Rising, marks the front entrance of the hotel, unifying the ground plane, podium and upper floors of the building in a visually stunning sculpture that extends skywards from the streetscape, creating an artistic moment for the city of Toronto.


Shangri-La Toronto

The Shangri-La Vancouver, to this day the tallest tower in the city at 646 feet, comprises a 119-room hotel and 307 residential homes. The first Shangri-La Hotel to open in Canada, it has consistently been one of Vancouver’s most-sought after hotels and one of the top three in the country. 

The full-height grids of luminescent panels on the corner façades are proprietary to this project. They are a composite comprised of a luminescent coating, chromatic ﬁlm and textured glass that absorb energy from daylight and surrounding light sources and then glow from that energy in the evening. They change colour when viewed from different vantage points and under different weather conditions. These luminescent grids are intended as veils, held off the glass surface on the corner façades and in practical terms, they conceal the building exhaust vents in the curtainwall skin behind. They require no wiring and consume no energy.

The Shangri-La Vancouver is an anchor for Alberni Street, having led the street’s transformation into the city’s luxury row and the most desirable downtown address for residents and retailers by bringing a global brands and fine dining to the street. Today, the project features a mix of retail and restaurants at the podium including an Urban Fare and on the second floor, the newly opened Miantiao, by our collaborator Kitchen Table Restaurants.

The Shangri-La is also home to the Vancouver Art Gallery - Offsite, an outdoor public art exhibition space curated by the Vancouver Art Gallery, which transforms the hotel’s public realm every few months with rotating installations by local and international artists. Located on Georgia Street at the entrance of the hotel, Offsite serves as a platform for contemporary artists to explore issues and subject matter of the current context in the midst of an active urban environment.

As with all of our hotels we are constantly renovating, updating and revisiting each and every aspect, in the goal of creating something that could be considered as among the best in the world. Over the next few years we will be conducting a significant renovation of the public areas of the hotel, with architect James Cheng. 


Shangri-La Vancouver

Deloitte Summit is a 24-storey office tower made up of several clusters of four-storey steel-framed cubes arranged around a central concrete core. The office will feature glass floors overlooking the city, roof terraces under overhanging volumes, vertical gardens framing views of the mountains and the largest rooftop amenity in Vancouver.

The character of the work space at Deloitte Summit is designed to be open, fluid, flexible, but also diverse. This new, creative work environment elicits collaboration, creativity, and spontaneity. The boxes create natural compartments within a continuous floorplate, allowing offices to be variously partitioned while also staying close to the façade. The floors and ceilings of the cantilevering portions are glazed to visually link the garden, the offices, and the street below. The resulting diversity of spaces is complimented by the diversity of views, whose orientation is not only horizontal, but also vertical.


KING Toronto will be the realization of the combined vision of Westbank, Allied and BIG, a reimagining of the community-building potential of Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 and an updating on the glass-and-light innovations first exemplified in the Maison de Verre, in Paris. Bjarke Ingels’ concept for KING Toronto, suggesting a Mediterranean mountain town, will complement the surrounding context and neighbourhood.

Similar to Bing Thom’s design for the Westbank project at Broadway and Commercial in Vancouver, BIG’s design at Vancouver House, Gregory Henriquez’s design at Mirvish Village and his finished product in the Woodward’s development in Vancouver, KING Toronto is another example of how to use architecture to solve the challenges of urbanization. Density done effectively, as in these neighbourhoods, is the very medium through which a sense of community can emerge.


The redevelopment of the Woodward’s site has revitalized the streetscape of the immediate area and is serving as a catalyst for the economic, social and physical revival of the Downtown Eastside. Covering almost an entire city block, this site, once a major department store, serves as the city’s historic and social heart.

For most residents of Greater Vancouver, the Woodward’s department store had special signiﬁcance. The department store closed down in 1993. A very important element of the Woodward’s project was the heritage conservation plan.

Our redevelopment plan differed signiﬁcantly from previous attempts at redeveloping by concentrating our efforts on the original 1903 – 08 building at the corner of Hastings and Abbott rather than attempting to save what was in fact a series of alterations and additions dating from 1903 to 1956. In addition to this restoration we carried out a number of interpretive zones, including: audio-visual stations; display windows; display cases; fragments from the original building, including a display of the original W sign placed on top of the tower in 1956. Installation of a new W sign on top of the restored 1903 building as well as the public art installation by Stan Douglas, Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971.

Woodward's is comprised of approximately one million square feet of market and non-market residential, institutional, retail, office and community uses including the new home for the Simon Fraser University (SFU) Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, above two levels of parking.

Woodward's

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. Completed in the 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

Envisioning this important city block, bounded by Georgia St, Richards, Seymour and Robson, as an integrated whole, rather than a series of development sites was the concept of TELUS President and CEO, Darren Entwistle. Westbank was chosen to partner with TELUS and bring that original vision to reality. There are so many aspects of this project which excite us, including using new technologies to achieve a LEED Platinum designation. We believe this may be one of the most important developments in Vancouver’s recent history and Gregory Henriquez and his team are giving it their best work to date.

TELUS Garden

In the summer of 2006, Westbank commenced construction on one of the last remaining development sites in Coal Harbour to add yet another landmark building to Vancouver’s waterfront.

The Fairmont Pacific Rim fuses the luxury brand of Fairmont Hotels and Resorts with Westbank’s reputation for quality design and construction. This property consists of a world-class 367-room Fairmont Hotel and 175 luxury residential homes with unparalleled views along with amenities and services for which Fairmont is famous for. This exciting new development is now Westbank’s latest stamp on the Vancouver skyline.

Canada’s top hotel opened for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and British Artist Liam Gillick’s installation “….lying on top of the building the clouds looks no nearer than when I was lying on the street” integrates art and architecture, a defining element indicative of Westbank's higher experiential focus. Patrons are encouraged to mingle among the many fine art installations, enjoy custom curated cocktails crafted by the award-winning lounge team, and enjoy access to exclusive fashions shows or grab a seat at one of the Bob Dylan-inspired tables and catch a live performance on the custom designed Fazioli piano.

The Fairmont Pacific Rim also features experiential and culinary offerings: Willow Stream Spa, giovane - an Italian cafe, the Lobby Lounge and RawBar, and Botanist – Vancouver’s newest restaurant featuring four diverse spaces – a dining room, cocktail bar and lab, garden, and a champagne lounge.

Fairmont Pacific Rim

Designed by renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, Westbank’s Alberni project is shaped by its environment. The 43-storey tower is carved by two emphatic scoops that form deep balconies furnished in wood. In both instances, the carvings create semi-enclosures that strengthen their relations to the street and to the views, connecting to its urban and geographic context while optimizing neighbouring views past the project.

Because of the way the otherwise orthogonal tower is carved, its silhouette constantly changes, creating illusionary profiles of arching cantilevers. The reality is far more structured as the carved deductions are diagonally symmetrical, the lower portion helping to counterbalance the hanging volume above.

The tower meets the ground with two intersecting domes that embrace Alberni and Cardero. Under the arching structures, an extensive moss garden defines the entrance and flows upwards to the swimming pool above. In keeping with Japanese spatial traditions, the emphasis is on the atmosphere rather than the object: without drawing attention to a particular point laden with meaning, the void elicits a serene visceral experience that can be shared by all.

Alberni by Kengo Kuma integrates intricate design details in woodwork throughout and within the interior design of the residential tower. The project’s amenities include a Kengo Kuma-designed Fazioli piano, a listening room, a fitness centre an expansive moss garden and swimming pool as well as a soon to be announced contemporary Japanese restaurant concept, inspired by the Japanese culinary art form of Kaiseki.


The Fazioli piano within the East Atrium at KING Toronto has been designed by BIG to reﬂect the theme of pixelation that is expressed throughout the architecture. 

KING Toronto

The centrepiece of the residential lobby at First Light will be a custom-designed Fazioli piano by glass artist John Hogan. Continuing the integration of art and architecture that defines the building, the piano at First Light will be a work of art but even more. It will build a bridge, through its materiality, to the beauty of light and through its utility as a musical instrument, to a feeling that only the sound of music can evoke.

First Light Seattle

'Cloud' Piano, 410 W Georgia

The concept for the Vancouver House lobby was to create a gallery type atmosphere in which different functional objects appear to float as pieces of art in space, as reflected in the design of the reception desk, the mailboxes and the mezzanine stairs. In designing the Fazioli piano, we wanted it to have a similar language as these other floating objects and to seem like a natural addition to the abacus of these elements. All of these elements have a finish of blackened steel – a material choice that was made intentionally in order to create the maximum visual contrast against the raw concrete walls and white terrazzo floor. The piano was stripped down to just its essential components, a simple trapezoidal element it appears to float with an illuminated underside, that is conceptually and visually linked to the other elements of the lobby. 

As architects, we never expected to design a piano. We liked the idea because it was an opportunity to think of how architecture could relate to furniture, albeit with completely different parameters. We therefore started conceptually. Since Alberni Street strives to create a new high-rise experience by introducing a soft and intimate idiom particular to Japanese space, we thought of how the piano could evoke the same feelings. By layering sheets of Hinoki wood, a spiritual material in Japan used for building temples, and by carving the piano in a similar manner as the tower, we arrived at something light, textured, and warm. Its hallowed formations implying an almost geological, timeless character.

When given the opportunity of designing a piano for the lobby of the Burrard & Nelson project, we wanted to approach the design for the piano in the same way we approach the design of our buildings. We design experiences. Whether it is a tower or a piano, we see our designs as the framework around which personal experiences are formed. We attempt to evoke the human spirit, in recognition that our designs can only be as good as the interactions they inspire.   

When given the opportunity to design a piano for the lobby of The Butterfly, we sought to capture the same experiential qualities inherent in the design of the tower itself. The lightness of the legs and rails echo the open garden breezeways, while its delicately sculpted geometry recalls the soft undulations of the tower’s skin, abstracted from the surrounding landscapes. Along the path of the piano’s design, four Alexander McQueen dresses, the Oyster Dress, Widows of Culloden, Voss and Sarabande were layered into the process, serving as a foil and a counterpoint for the instrument’s emerging form. Each of these dresses are in their own right a vessel of expression and each exemplify artistry in a different, yet parallel medium. We challenged ourselves to weave together these complementary inspirations, in order to create a framework through which our stories could be told. 

The resulting piano speaks of the space it inhabits and embodies the influence of many artistic mediums. Conceived as an empty vessel, it is intended to be filled with new encounters and free to be titled by each individual, with every encounter. The designers invite the pianist to sculpt their audience’s perceptions with each performance, and hope every listener will freely attach their own associations to the piano and the building in which it resides, as the music plays.


What started as a Westbank-sponsored fundraiser to help purchase and place publicly accessible pianos around the city, became an event focussed around the piano we commissioned. For the event, we built a bike attached to a carriage attached to a piano. We then hired an artist, Zola Novak to paint the piano, and we invited Mayor Gregor Robertson to ride it into its new home at Woodward’s. This whole event came about after we were inspired watching CNN after the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015 and saw a story about a man who painted a peace symbol on a piano and played *Imagine* out in a Parisian square. Then, when there was a police shooting in Dallas a few months later he took his piano and played Dallas. The man’s music struck a nerve and we thought it captured a sentiment worth replicating. The piano for Keys to the Streets is still there in the lobby of Woodward’s, being played as much as eight hours a day. Next we are putting a piano in the laneway at TELUS Garden.

Right now the team at Keys to the Streets has 25 pianos around the city and it is a fantastic way to bring people together. If you walk about the city and you look at the pianos, people are playing them all day long. The program, is managed entirely by volunteers who maintain, paint, source and place these pianos all around the city. It is a program that fits well into our ideas of using art to build community. 


When designing the Fazioli Piano at TELUS Garden, we challenged ourselves to create an instrument that is truly of this place. To achieve a design specific to the building, the materiality and geometry of the instrument had to be in sync with the project as a whole. The architecture of TELUS Garden has a distinctive West Coast aesthetic and materiality, inspired by British Columbia’s natural environment. Our Fazioli is made from the same edgegrain Douglas Fir that is used throughout the project, in the exterior “whale bone” canopy and the interior beams. Each detail, from the geometry of the bench to the piano’s v-shaped legs, echoes design elements from the architecture and, as in the building, each design detail in the piano is as much a contribution to the aesthetic as it is a functional component. We always imagined the piano to be the focal point of the lobby and the acoustics in the entrance space create a unique reverberation of sound that is perfectly suited to highlight the music. Now that the project is complete and the piano installed, it is extremely rewarding to see how the our Fazioli design adds to the overall experience of TELUS Garden.

The custom Fazioli piano that is featured in the lobby at Shangri-La Toronto was designed to fit seamlessly into both the hotel’s lobby and restaurant concepts. The hotel lobby was designed to complement Bosk, the elegant restaurant at the base of the hotel. We designed the two spaces together, so each would have its own identity while maintaining continuity of the aesthetic language and material palette. The lobby features travertine stone surfaces with accents of oak wood, while Bosk uses the wood to define the restaurant with a dramatic and dense application. Both designs express the Shangri-La’s timeless and understated aesthetic and its subtle Asian-inspired theme. Made of white oak, the piano was intended to be cohesive with the overall lobby design featuring oak wood accents. It was also important to us to that the piano’s design reflected its Canadian context, so with Joni Mitchell’s blessing, we introduced lyrics from her song, My Old Man, etched into the interior wood surface of the Fazioli’s top board.

Origami Fazioli

Our goal when designing the interiors of the Fairmont Pacific Rim Lobby Bar and Oru Restaurant was to provide a highly integrated design that would set the space apart, while creating a truly unique experience for hotel guests. When challenged to design a custom Fazioli to complete the project, we set out to ensure that it would become the centre of gravity not only for the lobby but for the entire hotel. Handcrafted in Italy, with an intricate and organic cut-out pattern, the piano’s design plays off of the 180-foot-long origami light sculpture that soars above, while providing a strong visual element to draw guests into the lobby.

Fairmont Pacific Rim 

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.


Gallery

Michelle Biggar, OMB

Fairmont Pacific Rim