We all know pop star Pharrell Williams from songs like ‘Happy’ and ‘Freedom’, but now the American musician has helped design a two-tower residential development for Toronto, Canada.
Enlisted by developers Reserve Properties and Westdale Properties to work with architects IBI Group, Williams will provide his expertise on the exterior, interiors and furnishings for the project called United.
It marks the Grammy Award-winning and Academy Award nominee’s first foray into the property market and follows other architecture and design endeavours like a youth centre in his home town Virginia with Miami-based architect Chad Oppenheim.
"The opportunity to apply my ideas and viewpoints to the new medium of physical structures has been amazing," said Williams.
"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.”
The development is set to be built in the city’s midtown neighbourhood, Yonge and Eglinton and will comprise of two towers joined by a podium.
Other than the fact that it will contain 750 residential units, little information has been distributed on the project. There is also a teaser image that shows metallic facades detailed with a zigzag profile.
"To live your life untitled means not having to live up to something or perform beyond a standard,” Mr Williams added.
"For the standard to literally just be this beautiful matrix that allows people to create their own world.
"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?”
Williams adds to the growing list of musicians who have become more vocal about their interest in architecture and design. Rapper Kanye West recently announced he was extending his Yeezy fashion label into affordable housing, beginning with his Star-Wars-themed homeless domes.
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