GESAMTKUNSTWERK

Westbank has built a practice around long-term commitments to artistry, sustainability and city-building. These commitments underlie an orientation towards projects like Woodwards, Vancouver House, Mirvish Village, Telus Garden and Oakridge – catalysts for larger change that go beyond the borders of the projects themselves. We are here to create. To provoke. To ignite. We are the vehicle for a new movement of cultural expression.

As the practice matures, we have become more ambitious. With every new project reflecting our commitment to the philosophy behind Gesamkunstwerk, or in our recent work the Japanese philosophy behind layering, the net effect is that our work becomes much more complex and far-reaching.

The core of Westbank’s mission is to create a body of work with a high degree of artistry that helps foster more equitable and beautiful cities. Westbank is active across Canada and in the United States, with projects including luxury residential, Five Star hotels, retail, office, rental, district energy systems, affordable housing initiatives and public art. Established in 1992, we are one of North America’s leading developers, with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Seattle, Shanghai, Beijing, Taiwan, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and over 25 billion dollars of projects completed or under development.

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Philosophy
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April 07, 2014

Westbank Salon Series: Leslie Van Duzer

Leslie Van Duzer is a Professor of Architecture and the Director of the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. Originally from Berkeley, California, she came to the University of British Columbia in 2010 after teaching for two decades in architecture schools across Europe and North America.

She has lectured and written for numerous international venues and has published three books in collaboration with Kent Kleinman: Mies van der Rohe: The Krefeld Villas; Villa Müller: A Work of Adolf Loos; and Rudolf Arnheim: Revealing Vision. A fourth book, co-authored with Maria Szadkowska, Adolf Loos: Works in the Czech Lands, accompanies a traveling exhibition.

Having just completed her most recent book, House Shumiatcher, the first in a series of building monographs on endangered West Coast modern houses, she is currently writing a new book: Double Climax: The Art of Deception in Architecture.

Our Westbank Salon Series featuring Leslie Van Duzer is on April 8, 2014, starting at 6:00pm in the Gesamtkunstwerk exhibition space.

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