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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/...rticle2232087/

West Coast builder has big Toronto plans

JOHN BENTLEY MAYS | Columnist profile | E-mail
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011 12:46PM EST

With the construction of his $504-million Living Shangri-La scheduled to top off in December, and with the grand opening of this luxury hotel-condominium complex on track for August, 2012, Vancouver tall-building developer Ian Gillespie is well on his way to putting down deep roots on Toronto’s lower University Avenue.

Two Toronto condominium schemes are coming up right behind Shangri-La, he told me recently. He was short on details – understandably, since both projects are still in very early stages of development – but he did say that his favoured architect for one of the two is Denmark’s Bjarke Ingels.

But a powerful part of BIG’s appeal is the firm’s proven ability to deliver large-scale designs that satisfy the demands of the real-estate industry while fully embodying Mr. Ingels’s commitments to city-building and high artistic standards. Toronto would probably be fortunate to get a Westbank building by this rising star in the architectural firmament.

“Bringing Bjarke in to do a building, if we’re able to put this all together, is going to open people’s eyes in Toronto to a world of possibilities,” he told me. “It will be a new form of development, not something anyone has ever seen before. When you see it you’ll go: Wow!”