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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1181452
34 BCBUSINESS NOVEMBER 2019 COURTESY OF WESTBANK municipal constrictions—and you put those into a computer program, and imag- ine you have a three-dimensional block of space, and you put those six constraints into it, that's exactly what it spits out. It's like a sausage, and I filled it full of meat." Of all of Gillespie's projects, architect Cheng is most impressed by Vancouver House, whose public art includes the 6.4-metre-high Spinning Chandelier by local artist Rodney Graham. "To take the under- side, the former parking lot for tow trucks, towed vehicles, and turn it into a celebrated public space is a major contribution." How involved is Gillespie in the design of Westbank's buildings? "He's extremely hands-on," Cheng says. "When we work together, we have lots of brainstorming ses- sions. We just sit around and toss ideas out, and then we will build on each other's ideas and try it further." A high level of mediocrity Gillespie makes no secret of his unhappi- ness with most of what gets built in Van- couver. He'd be better off concentrating Westbank's growth in Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco and Tokyo because they're more profitable, he says. "But this is my home. And so I'll go by a site and I'll say, Man, if I don't take that project on, then some- body's going to put up a piece of shit, and I'm going to go by it and have to live with the consequences." He dials it back a little. "Vancouver has less bad stuff than a lot of communities," he says. "But a high level of mediocrity shouldn't be acceptable, and that's what we're getting." During his time as co-director of plan- ning, the City and developers took flak for doing great urbanism but not necessarily great architecture, Larry Beasley says. As many people complained, builders kept cranking out boring structures that would look at home in any given suburb. Gillespie thought there was a market niche of intelligent, well-informed consum- ers who wanted something better, Beasley explains. "He always started with good local architects, but he then started hiring international architects and bringing what I would literally call high design into the development industry in a way that Van- couver hadn't seen before." The result: "A lot of other developers started paying attention to the issue of design, to using design as one of the selling points of their projects," Beasley says. "It set the bar way higher in the city, and I think it solved an issue we were facing, which was we were getting nice streetscapes and a good mix of urbanism, but we were not getting those iconic buildings. And now we're starting to get them, and [Gillespie has] been in the vanguard." Epic battles At Westbank headquarters, Gillespie shows me a red maquette of Rising, a sculpture by Chinese artist Zhang Huan, who based his work on the stump and roots of a tree. The real thing—22 tonnes of unpainted stainless steel, including 1,200 birds—soars up the outside of Toronto's Westbank- built Shangri-La hotel and residences. Gillespie, who says his company has executed on roughly 100 pieces of pub- lic art across the country, notes that the City of Toronto required him to spend $1 million on Rising. "My cost on this was over $22 million." That willingness to take a hit is noth- ing new. Just ask former Vancouver chief planner Brent Toderian, who worked with Gillespie for six years in that role and has advised and consulted for Westbank. "I have had truly epic battles with Ian, particularly at city hall, and there have been times where we have not been on the same page," says the founder of Vancouver-based Toderian UrbanWorks. "But more than any other developer in the city, I have always respected where his passion comes from." Where Toderian's fights with developers were often about profit and cost, Gillespie is driven by better ideas, he says. "I have liter- ally seen Ian add time and cost to a project of his to argue for something that he thinks is interesting and better, but that has no financial benefit to him. It might even have a financial detriment." PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE (Clockwise from top) Westbank's Woodward's redevelopment, which opened in 2009; Vancouver House stands out; the Butterfly residential tower, due for comple- tion in 2022