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.

Sign up to the Gesamtkunstwerk eMail Newsletter to receive a selection of consistently intelligent coverage of art, architecture and design culture.

Stay informed about the Westbank projects you're interested in

Philosophy
« Back To Home
September 20, 2015

Reimagining Mirvish Village

By design, cities can be made better. Mirvish Village marks a bold and necessary shift in city-building: a comprehensive purpose-built community of rental apartments and innovative retail.

Every one of the 1,100 suites here will be rental—not condos for sale—and nearly half will be two bedrooms and up, suitable for families (a 50 space daycare is planned). At the heart of the block will be a true market hall with its various purveyors setting up under soaring glass vaults, and nearby will be “Honest Ed’s Alley,” an incubator for new retail that will be more soul than supermarket. It is not just the development ‘what’ of Mirvish Village that will be unprecedented, but also our total design attention to ‘how.’

A fine grain of scale shapes our intentional variety of low and medium rise housing forms, and even our high rises will be slender and organically linked to their locales. Fine grain also best describes how many Markham Street Victorian houses will be restored, even setting the pattern and appointments of our shop-fronts along Bathurst and Bloor, plus public spaces. No more generic and forgettable developments; with public art and architectural artistry, Westbank aims to shape a special moment in the history of Toronto’s city-building. Ed Mirvish once said “There is no place like this place, anyplace”; our design and development team is rising to his challenge.

Share

Get on the list

Stay informed about the Westbank projects you're interested in