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Future Westbank Project (Bjarke Ingels)

Those projects are really hard to take seriously. How many have actually been built?
 
Memph said:
I wonder how come the "Vancouver" rendering has Dallas buildings in the background...
Click to expand...
More interestingly, I wonder how come the alleged image of a "Vancouver" building is linked-to from the website of a rendering company, Glessner Group, where it appears on their portfolio page labelled as the "Shenzen Tower", and how come it looks identical to what's called the "Shenzen Energy Mansion" on Ingels's site?

The idea that an office project was cancelled in Shenzen and repurposed, without modification, as a residential Vancouver project -- despite the fact said Shenzen project was specifically designed to be environmentally-attuned to a tropical climate -- seems a bit of a stretch.
 
Hmm...appears that they have taken down the original image (through that link), and replaced it with something else.

Here's what the Vancouver proposal was suppose to look like. The left tower is a massing filler.

1d912047.jpg
 
Watched the TED talk. The man is freaking brilliant - almost godlike, really. If anyone could design, say, an artificial planet or a Moon colony, it would be him. We definitely need one or more of his designs in this filing cabinet town.
 
Based on an earlier hint by LeftCoaster that something of significance may be planned for the area, I'm going to guess that our Ingels project will in the Shops @ Don Mills.

Quote originally posted in the Flaire Condos thread:

LeftCoaster said:
Yes there are many more buildings planned, there's an even taller tower not pictured... might be a big named architect designing it too ;)
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OK, weird story, and proof I may be spending too much time on this site:

There was an oddly familiar-looking man staring back at me from an ad on the outside of a streetcar this morning, and after wondering where on earth I had come across him before and what he did for the better part of today, something finally clicked--the ad was for Toronto's Interior Design Show, and the guy was Ingels.

After a bit of Googling, turns out he's in town to speak at the Interior Design show this Friday. Wonder if fresh news could be afoot?
 
Bjarke is in town, and not only for IDS...He was/is meeting with a few prospective clients while in Toronto before heading to the states. There are a number of projects that will be potentially coming out of thw woodwork shall we say in the upcoming months - not only CF, but graywood and potentially one more..but not residential or commercial.

p5
 
So, here's what Bjarke had to say at the Interior Design Show yesterday.

Caveats: It's long (at least it's in bite-sized chucks) and not quite as steady as one might have liked… but at more than an hour total without a tripod, I think I did pretty well.

[video=youtube;SpKA4XhJZDM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpKA4XhJZDM[/video]

[video=youtube;zJzSm1wSzhM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJzSm1wSzhM[/video]

[video=youtube;p1Z4E5IOiwA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1Z4E5IOiwA[/video]

[video=youtube;6AY0ASXsB5Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AY0ASXsB5Y[/video]

[video=youtube;Y9OwVdb8p6U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9OwVdb8p6U[/video]

[video=youtube;oNUNS0TlNDY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNUNS0TlNDY[/video]

[video=youtube;N5-gKniOkA8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5-gKniOkA8[/video]

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Lise Rochon in today's Globe:
When it comes to flaunting their gutsy design, the Danes are global warriors. Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is a brainy, zany design powerhouse, fuelled by nearly 100 architects in Copenhagen and another 30 based in New York. Its leader, Bjarke Ingels – who delivered one of his energizing public lectures in Toronto this week, and is scheduled to speak at Vancouver’s Chan Centre on April 12 – is designing a condo tower in Vancouver’s downtown, and another in Toronto with Toronto’s Hariri Pontarini Architects, to be developed by Westbank and Cadillac Fairview.

“I’ve always had this one talent – I was always very good at drawing,” Ingels, 37, told me from his New York office. “In daycare, I’d be sitting there and drawing whatever people wanted.” To help his global pitch, he’s created a comic book, Yes is More, in which he zooms around as an architectural superhero.

During a Danish-embassy-sponsored tour of Copenhagen in 2009, I visited Mountain Dwellings, a BIG-designed 80-unit housing complex in Orestad on the outskirts of the city. In this mostly flat country, what draws you first to the building is a massive, milky-white image of Mount Everest. Produced through a series of tiny perforations in the aluminum cladding, it disguises a massive parking garage. The entire complex is sloped like a small mountain, with a diagonal elevator rising up through the vibrantly coloured garage. Each of the housing units – which sit atop the garage – connects to a private garden terrace, framed in wood, with irrigation systems that drain into a collective holding tank.

BIG resists making buildings that look like buildings. The mountainscape motif returns often, most recently for a commission to design a 600-unit apartment at 57th Street on Manhattan’s West Side. Rather than give in to the typical slab tower, BIG has carved a large courtyard into a steeply sloped volume, offering some interior solace from the roaring noise of traffic from the West Side Highway.
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I think that pretty much settles it: The initial rumblings that prompted this thread are in fact a Westbank/Cadillac Fairview joint development, the CF insider is indeed a credible source, and this'll be a condo project at Shops of Don Mills, with Hariri Pontarini in the mix.

Of course, as every mystery gets solved, we get a new one, and whether we get ourselves a delicious Bjarke Ingels non-residential project elsewhere in the city (and where, and what, and with who) should be a fun one.

Have to say, I do hope Ingels isn't falling into the pattern of recent international architectural stars where his firm is theoretically involved simultaneously on dozens and dozens of projects as a joint venture with more local, blander firms, where it's clear the Ingels name is mostly adding brand power and most of the creative lifting is being done less effectively by the locals.
 
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