What does BIG's King West design mean for Toronto architecture?

If you Google "Toronto architecture" and then go to “Architecture of Toronto” on Wikipedia, the opening paragraph says it is “most marked by its being the financial capital of Canada, as well as the political capital of Ontario.” It goes on to say that Toronto has traditionally been a peripheral city in the architecture world, with only limited local variation on the European and American styles from which it borrows.

Courtesy BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group

Being most marked by a financial district is hardly a resoundingly positive review, and although one shouldn’t look to Wiki for indisputable evidence, they’ve got a point. Our buildings are … tall. Although there are certainly pockets of interest throughout — the Annex with its Victorian style, some once-industrial areas like the Distillery District, and the Georgian manors of Rosedale spring to mind — Toronto’s architectural “style” is pretty lackluster, and that’s in spite of being visited by some of the world’s most prominent architects. Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei and Daniel Libeskind have all made contributions. We tend toward brick, as our geography atop a former lakebed has helped make it cheap. Many of our current condo developers favour glass.

Courtesy BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group

But it’s not a lack of imagination that has kept us from becoming one of the world’s great architectural cities — at least, not on the part of architects and builders. Rather, it’s a laborious approvals process, antiquated zoning bylaws, and a polite Canadian penchant for not rocking the boat. With recent signs pointing towards a more art-for-art’s sake focus, can we be at last on the cusp of something really interesting?

Young Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, whose urban design esthetic leans towards the downright fanciful, has been tapped for a new project on King Street West under Vancouver developer Ian Gillespie. Gillespie’s Westbank Corp. is known for bringing more creativity to his designs than many developers, including the east end Vancouver project that turned Woodward’s department store into a housing complex and retail concern. His firm has also announced an ambitious plan for Honest Ed’s, including a Barcelona-inspired market square.

Courtesy BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group

Ingels and his eponymous firm BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) is known for eschewing traditional design in favour of sloped lines, unexpected colours and style innovations that have won him multiple awards. In addition to numerous housing projects in Copenhagen, Ingels has been responsible for an increasingly international portfolio including the Danish pavilion at Shanghai’s 2010 World Expo, a museum in Mexico City, a zero-emission resort in Azerbaijan, a city hall in Estonia and an education centre in the Faroe Islands. Set to open in 2017 and topped off last year, the firm also designed Denmark’s Lego House.

Courtesy BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group

Ingels, who was in town this week to deliver a public talk being held last night, will turn about 725,000 square feet into more than 500 apartments for the King West project, pending city approval, and if the design is approved, provide arguably our first truly different-looking condominium block, a “pixelated” community of modules that harken to Expo 1967’s Habitat, according to the Globe and Mail’s Alex Bozikovic.

Instead of flat slabs, the upper storeys of the several buildings would step back like a Babylonian ziggurat, with the 12-by-12 foot modules pivoted 45 degrees, so each looks out at an oblique angle. The layout would allow for at least a dozen different floorplans, each of which, in keeping with Ingels’ green tendencies, would feature a private terrace. Ingels has compared the proposed design to a “Mediterranean mountain town.”

Courtesy BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group

Keeping to the spirit of the deep city block, which developed a century ago with a hodgepodge of pathways and lanes, the new development would feature a walkable public courtyard and publicly accessible pathways within the development itself.

While it would be (very) premature to say we’ve seen the end of tower-and-podium design, the possibility of our first Ingels community is still something to get (cautiously) excited about. As Ingels said, “Commercial real estate suffers from the self-fulfilling prophecy — you can only point to what’s already out there and say this is what people want.” How great would it be to see our developers finally leading the way and showing people what they want before they even know it themselves?

Feature image courtesy BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group