Music superstar Pharrell Williams is collaborating on a new two-tower, residential development at Yonge and Eglinton with Reserve Properties and Westdale Properties.
Called "untitled," the project is the result of “a multi-faceted design process that saw Williams work with an extended project team, including architects IBI Group and Interior Designers U31, to deliver a new vision for residential living,” stated a news release.
A video message from Williams aired at Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square Tuesday to announce the project. Sales are slated to begin in early 2020.
Williams, a Grammy Award-winning artist, producer, songwriter, philanthropist, fashion designer and entrepreneur, is known for high-profile collaborations, including a capsule collection with Chanel and a long-standing relationship with Adidas and Human Made.
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"The opportunity to apply my ideas and viewpoint to the new medium of physical structures has been amazing," said Williams in the news release.
"Everyone at the table had a collective willingness to be open, to be pushed, to be prodded and poked, to get to that uncomfortable place of question mark, and to find out what was on the other side. The result is untitled and I'm very grateful and appreciative to have been a part of the process."
Sheldon Fenton, president and CEO of Reserve, said in the release that it’s a tremendous honour to collaborate with Williams.
The partnership was born out of a desire to do something really unique for Toronto and architecture as a whole.
"We believe by bringing in a cultural icon with vision and ideation from outside the realm of real estate it will allow us to break the mold in terms of what has traditionally been done. So far the experience has been off the charts and beyond our expectations."
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A series of design meetings were held in New York, Los Angeles and London over the course of the past year to create the vision for the project. The key themes, said the release, are essentialism, connections to the elements and the universality of space emerged to guide the overall direction of untitled.
The ethos of universality is also how the team landed on the brand untitled, which encapsulates the notion that physical space is only a backdrop.
"To live your life untitled means not having to live up to something or perform beyond a standard. For the standard to literally just be this beautiful matrix that allows people to create their own world," said Williams. "How could we as designers ensure the essentials were really thought out and expertly crafted, but delivered in a way that left everything else up to the imagination of the person occupying the space."
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Untitled is another joint-venture between Reserve and Westdale, following the success of Line 5. With untitled, the two Toronto-based developers are once again returning to mid-town with 750 units, split between two towers and a joint-podium.
"Yonge and Eglinton is in the midst of a tremendous transformation that is unlike anything else happening in North America",says Mitchell Cohen, CEO of Westdale.
"We were one of the first to invest in the area and to see just how far midtown has come since then has been a highlight. As developers with a long track record in this neighbourhood, collaborating with Pharrell is about pushing ourselves to do better. But it's also an opportunity to give back to a community that has given us so much."
