Architect transformed communities worldwide
Business wizard was a calm philosopher who meditated daily, juggled obligations
Visionary artist, calm philosopher who meditated every day — even while juggling complex obligations that involved hundreds of millions of dollars — business wizard, respected by all as a kind, decent man, his stunning architecture marked the world.
Bing Thom’s astonishing, emotionally engaging designs ranged from private homes to entire cities.
Dalian New Town, completed in 1996 in northeast China, was designed to balance industrial needs for rapid port expansion with a sustainable built environment sensitive to local history and culture.
The architecture firm he founded in 1981 has now won more than 90 major awards.
He was born in Hong Kong on Dec. 8, 1940, one year to the day before it was attacked by Japan. His mother brought him to B.C. when he was eight. His father, Wesley Cunningham Thom, stayed in China. Bing’s grandfather had emigrated to Vancouver in the 1890s and Wesley was born in New Westminster. Wesley was the first person of Chinese descent to obtain a pharmacy degree in B.C., but he was denied the right to practice. He went to Hong Kong and stayed, preferring risks from the communist revolutionaries who seized power in 1949 to the racist discrimination here.
His family settled in Kerrisdale. Bing was the only Chinese student at his elementary school. His classmates mocked him. Yet by the time he reached Grade 9 he was elected to student council.
He studied architecture at UBC under another renowned architect, Arthur Erickson, and later worked for him as a project manager for the Robson Square Courthouse and Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Then he spent time studying with Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki before launching his own firm. His company’s buildings won two Governor-General’s medals, eight Lieutenant-Governor’s medals and scores of other prestigious acknowledgments of architectural excellence.
Bing Thom Architects counts among its achievements the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC, Surrey Central Library, a centre in Hong Kong that blends theatre, art and public space, an Asian hub for the University of Chicago, and the Arena Stage in Washington.
Arena Stage resembles a swooping white wing above a glittering doorway into another dimension, exactly what good theatre represents. The Washington Post said the building transforms an entire quadrant of the U.S. capital — a city not exactly impoverished of iconic buildings.
Thom died of a brain aneurysm on Oct. 4, 2016, during a business trip to Asia.