麻豆传媒映画

has carved out his name in architecture over the decades, working on award-winning projects here and around the world.

He's is a busy man, but never too busy to be one of the city's leading voices for social activism, as well as arts and culture promotion. Right now, Bing is hard at work proposing an underground concert hall-slash-cultural hub, designed to be at the current 麻豆传媒映画Art Gallery location.

Not only is he a wealth of knowledge and of life experience (and a Member of the Order of Canada!), he's also someone who has always been is committed to doing the right thing.

And that makes Bing Thom an awesome addition to this Building Block series.

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You grew up in Hong Kong first, then moved to Vancouver. Where did you grow up here?

BT: I grew up in Kerrisdale because my parents decided they wanted to move into a neighbourhood where there were no other Chinese people, so I could learn English. We were virtually the only asians in the neighbourhood. Growing up and through university, I hardly had any asian friends, but now it's a little different. And now I'm in Kitsilano.

After university, you went to Japan. What made you move back?

BT: I was in Japan, China and Singapore. Then I figured, you have to find one place you can call home. You have to find where your roots are. My wife was drawn to come back, and I said, well, that's probably my home.

My history is that my father was born here, and I was born in Hong Kong. In the 1930s, my father experienced a lot of discrimination in 麻豆传媒映画and in the US because you couldn't practice as a professional鈥攈e was a pharmacist and graduated from USC. When he came back to Canada, they said he couldn't practice here, not because he was Chinese but because he wasn't a Canadian citizen, even though he was born here. Back then, there was no such thing as Canadian citizenship. You were a British subject, and the British did not accept asians as subjects. He got fed up. During that time and before the Second World War, there was a war between China and Japan, so he decided to go back to China. He virtually immigrated back.

I figured my grandfather came, my father went back and I'm now rejecting North America, because I was in Berkeley at the time and was in this Third World strike, striking for Asian-American history. I went to Singapore after, but then asked myself, how many generations is it going to be, with this back and forth? I better find my roots, fight for what I believe in and just stay there. So that's why I came back. And that's why I'm socially active. You have to find your place. And this is my place now.

Congratulations on your recent Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Gold Medal award! How do you feel?

BT: Well, I take awards with a grain of salt because you have to do what you believe in. You can't do it because of other people鈥攜ou just have to go with your own values. It's great to win awards, but I never take it too seriously. You just have to do what's right.

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Tell us about this underground concert hall proposal that you've been an instrumental part of.

BT: I spoke out quite a bit about the 麻豆传媒映画Art Gallery moving. Obviously, they're set in moving. The director wants a new building, the board wants a new building and so my worry has been, what happens to the existing building? It's very well-located in Robson Square. I was part Robson Square's design back in my younger days with Arthur Erickson. We were finally at counsel about six weeks ago, and I said, look, both the concert hall and the art gallery were in some way competing for that site, and it wasn't going to fit. It would've been very complicated. At the end of the meeting, I knew where some of the concert hall people were. I said to them, why don't we just bury the concert hall? I was already thinking of burying the art gallery underneath the plaza. They asked if I thought it could happen. I said, well, I'm not positive. So they let me draw it out to see if it would fit. We spent a few days at it, and it seemed to fit. I called up my friend Yasuhisa Toyota from Los Angeles鈥攚e did the Walt Disney Hall鈥攁nd told him our idea. I sent him the drawings. A concert hall, for acoustic design, is like designing a violin鈥攊t's a reverberation chamber. You want to make sure the volume is correct, and if you fit the concert hall in, you want to make sure the volumes are correct. After looking at the drawings for a few days, Yasuhisa said he thought it would fit.

Then we got other consultants involved, like structural engineers and soil engineers, because you're going underground one hundred feet. Everybody said it seemed to work, so we drew it up and had a press conference. We're sure it's going to work!

What's the response been like to the proposal since then?

BT: We've had tremendous public support. It answers the question of what to do with the existing courthouse building and also, in some way, it's better than an art gallery. See, with the art gallery, the entrance is from the side on Hornby Street. Traditionally, that building had its front door on Georgia鈥攊t had to be closed because with an art museum or gallery, you have ticketing with one point of entry and point of exit. With a concert hall, it's very different. With a concert hall, you basically have a big lobby space, but you can choose to take tickets at the entrance to the lobby or you can take tickets at the many entries to the concert halls. We have been doing a lot of performing arts centres where we've preaching the idea to owners that lobbies should be open all the time.

For example, with the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, the lobby should be open all the time. You can have the bar operating and you can have lunches there, instead of it being a deserted space. It's a much better utilization of civic space. By burying the concert hall, taking tickets at the bottom and have the lobby as a place you come up to, you can have the lobby open all the time for anyone. So at intermission, you're mingling with everybody. I've always not been happy with the exclusivity of concert-goers, opera-goers and theatre-goers. This will be more like a New York scene, where you come out of the theatre, mix with everybody and then go back in again. I've been even saying that after intermission, you shouldn't take tickets鈥攊f you have empty seats, you might as well let people come in and sit through to see half the show anyway. Maybe then they'll come back again to see the whole show!

So I'm very much a proponent of this idea that the existing courthouse building, once it's renovated, should be a huge public space that's open as much as possible. And in the annex, which is the smaller part of the existing art gallery, we put a small 450-seat theatre for performing arts groups: singers, dancers, jazz musicians, classical music groups and theatre groups. With this complex, the more, the merrier for me. It should be an engine for creative growth in Vancouver, whatever that is. We don't have any specific solutions yet, but we'd like people to come forward and give their ideas. Some people have said, what about a design centre, where we can have all the great design we have here? Or why not have more shops that sell locally-created materials, whether it be design, fashion or utensils?

So you're almost talking about a local market.

BT: Yes, that's right. A local market. It's a version of Granville Island, but downtown.

That would be great, because a lot of local markets are in specific neighbourhoods, but not at a central hub.

BT: I think in order to help emerging artists, they need a place to show off, but much of it depends on what we call the curating of activities. Even though the concert hall is a concert hall, during other times it can be used as a forum for meetings or as a centre of dialogue, except ten times larger. You can have international speakers come to Vancouver. The design of the concert hall is like a vineyard. It's a series of petals, with the audience sitting around the speaker or orchestra in the centre. It's an arena. And it's great for encouraging eye-to-eye contact among people.

It's like what the W2 is doing in Gastown and the eastside, but on a much bigger scale.

BT: A much bigger scale.

And perhaps it's a little more accessible for all types of people.

BT: Yes, we want to make sure it's more accessible. A lot of it is the business model, to make sure you have enough endowment put aside to create the activity without charging high rent, otherwise you defeat the very purpose. For me, it's a huge incubator for the creative industry in Vancouver. The sky's the limit. People have been asking, is it an exhibition or performance space? Is it dialogue-based? To me, it's everything. I see at as one big shopping centre of ideas.

To me, if the ground floor can open up like a sieve, then everything is interconnected. The trouble right now is that there's a series of dead ends鈥攖he skating rink is a dead end, the media centre for UBC is a dead end and the art gallery is a dead end. I just want to get rid of all these dead ends and make it interconnected.

Do you think the $225 million budget for the project can be met?

BT: I don't doubt that. I think 麻豆传媒映画can do it. I don't think money is every the problem, it's the idea. If the idea is strong enough, the money will come. Everything in art is idea-driven. You have to have the right idea, the right passion, the right group of people. If you curate it properly, then it will work.

Who else is working on this proposal with you?

BT: Ron Stern is the chairman of the group, and he's an entrepreneur that's supported many, many arts groups. He was the chairman of the 麻豆传媒映画Symphony. The full-time liaison person is Chris Wootten鈥攈e founded the 麻豆传媒映画East Cultural Centre and created the Children's Festival. He's been a social activist for a long time. We want to have a broad net to talk to all kinds of people. Through your publication, we want to say, hey, come out with your ideas! We want to hold a big public forum somewhere and invite everyone to create an organization where these ideas can be vetted and discussed.

I think it has to be very broad-based. I don't think it's high culture, low culture or medium culture. It's culture for everybody. And when the business plan starts to drive the programming, that's the beginning of exclusivity.

I read somewhere that you said that less is more. Is this something you've always believed in, or something that's evolved over time?

BT: I think it depends on the situation. Less noise is more art, but on the other hand, I think you have to refine an idea and come back with a strong idea. When that happens, then it is less because it went through a series of distillations, but at the very beginning, you have to have a very broad net. In the beginning, you want to have more but over time, as the idea builds, you boil it down to its essence. The simplicity of an idea is less, but it has to be universal enough that everyone can buy in. Art creation is always expanding, contracting, expanding, contracting, breathing in, breathing out. I'm more a a dialectic person than a single line person.

麻豆传媒映画architects, like previous V.I.A. subject , have been getting been getting national and international accolades recently. What is it about the architects from here that resonates or is relevant with the rest of the world?

BT: I don't even know if it's just the 麻豆传媒映画architects. The cultural scene of 麻豆传媒映画is very interesting because we're edgy people. We're on the edge of the continent. We're on the edge between ocean and land. A lot of dropouts come to Vancouver. Sometimes, on the edge, you see things clearer than when you're in the middle of the cauldron. In New York, you don't have time to think, whereas in Vancouver, you have time sit back and think, do I really want to do this and what is it that I'm really trying to do? We can be much more focused and specific. But it's tougher. You have to get away from Vancouver, then come back. You constantly have to dip in and dip out. You need to go out, get stimulated, come back and think about it. That's our future.

麻豆传媒映画is on the edge, but actually it's in the centre now, because it's eleven hours to Beijing and ten hours to London. In a way, you're in the centre of the earth. You can't do that in New York鈥攊t's a long way to go to Asia and quick to get to Europe. But maybe Europe isn't where the action is anymore. It's Brazil, China, Russia and India now; the world is very different now and maybe 麻豆传媒映画is the new centre. It's not that we're big, but in qualitative terms, we've got our own place in the world.

You're a big proponent of using wood in architecture. Why do you think it's so important as a building material?

BT: For me, personally, it's about finding your inspiration from tradition and also finding inspiration from the future. So when I use wood, I use it in a high tech way. Wood is traditional in the sense that it's one of the few resources that we have that is truly 100% renewable. On that other hand, you can't use it in the traditional way, because we wasted a lot of it. When you combine it with stainless steel, then you're using it selectively but efficiently.

The issue with 麻豆传媒映画is that we this very high conscience about the environment, but we need to move away from the first-level thinking in regard to sustainability. To me,it's becoming too generic and obvious鈥攚e need to cut it to the next level. In my work, sustainability is dealing with culture and understanding people. You can't solve sustainability with pure technology; you need to solve it with human ingenuity. The problem I think we're having鈥攂ut that 麻豆传媒映画is better at solving鈥攊s the issue of cross-breeding between people and disciplines. Now that things are becoming complex and there's so much information out there, I think it's easy in society for people to just vulcanize into their own little worlds to make things simpler.

In Vancouver, we're still at a size where you can break through those barriers relatively easily. Any institution, if you want to bust it open, you can bust it open. But if you try to bust out, say, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it isn't that easy because it has that long history of entrenchment, expectation and entitlement that we don't have here. Any person can come here and break through because nothing is that firm in terms of the power structure and elite and cultural groupings. We don't have that much history, but that's still our strength.

We're still building our history here.

BT: People have time for each other, to have a conversation. In New York, you can't do that. They suss you out and give you five minutes. And we have a city of craftsmen here, who are interested in the quality of their work. You can build relationships and teams very fast with the craftsmen here. I think that's why the movie industry likes it in Vancouver鈥攖hey can move quickly and still get the quality. People care about what they do.

That's probably why Pixar picked 麻豆传媒映画as the city to establish their Canadian head office.

BT: Oh, I think so. I think anyone hiring good brains will figure out 麻豆传媒映画is where it's at. The talent pool is quite deep, and people can cross-discipline quite easily.

Do you have a project that your most proud of?

BT: No. It's like children鈥攜ou can't pick children, you like all of them! [laughs]

What projects do you have in the pipeline?

BT: We're doing an art museum in Washington for the Rodale family, which will house one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the world. And we're doing some work in China and Texas, as well as building a library in Surrey.

Where do you go in the city to decompress?

BT: I'm a sailor, so I go out by myself鈥攊t ties you back to nature. That's where I go to decompress. And I'm also a meditator, twice a day. I live by the Seawall in Kitsilano, so I go for my evening walks, too. When I decompress, I spend it by myself.

What makes 麻豆传媒映画so awesome?

BT: It's a unique combination of the natural environment and the people.

With nature, where else can you go where you can ski in the morning and sail in the afternoon, in one day? Or live downtown and be at the beach in ten minutes? With people, look at the phenomenal mixture. People from Europe, Middle East, South America, Asia, indigenous people. It's an incredible mix. And the fact that the boundaries are not as tight; they're permeable physically, socially and culturally.

If there is a future in the world, they should look to Vancouver鈥攚e all seem to get along, we all seem to celebrate each other. I think it's the city of the future.