Grammy winner Pharrell Williams appeared on a giant video screen in Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square on Tuesday to announce that he helped design a new condo development in the city.
The 46-year-old music artist said the project’s name, Untitled, refers to “the notion that physical space is only a backdrop.”
Williams explained: “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.”
Williams was enlisted by Reserve Properties and Westdale Properties to collaborate with architects IBI Group and interior design studio U31 on 33- and 21-storey towers with a total of 751 units, to be built just north of Toronto’s busy Yonge and Eglinton.
“I'm very grateful and appreciative to have been a part of the process,” said Williams, who promised to be in Toronto for the official launch in January.
Sales for Untitled will begin next year with occupancy scheduled for early 2023.
This is the first residential project for Williams, who has designed clothing, footwear, jewelry, furniture and more. In 2011, he partnered with an architect to design a youth centre in his native Virginia Beach.
In a tweet, federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh asked Williams: “Any affordable housing planned in this? Asking for working class people who can’t afford rent in 91% of Canadian cities.” Singh then quoted lyrics from one of Williams’ biggest hits: “Clap along if you feel like man dem without a roof.” (The actual lyrics, from “Happy,” are: “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.”)
In his 2012 book Pharrell: Place and Spaces I’ve Been, Williams spoke with architect Zaha Hadid about designing affordable pre-fabricated housing.
“They say that we are bouncing back from the recession, but in a lot of areas, especially the housing sector… So I felt that if we would make something that was about $75,000 to $100,000 (U.S.) that we would could do something really fun and really next-level that could change the game, you know?”
BNN Bloomberg reported in June that the average price of a Toronto condo was $579,000.