Architectural Explorations in Books - Restructuring Urban Uplift April 27, 2011

FREE - Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Vancouver-based Bing Thom Architects have quietly produced a portfolio of built work that garners praise not only for its inspired spaces and forms, but for the inspirational role their buildings play in the lives of the communities they call home. The firm’s commitment to using great architecture to improve the urban context and social condition is a consistent theme that has run through the firms’ work for nearly 30 years. Bing Thom holds a fundamental belief in the transformative power of great architecture to uplift, not only the physical, but also the economic and social conditions of a community. That belief in this power has become the grounding philosophy for the office, and has resulted in memorable architecture that consistently taps into something beyond aesthetics.

Join Principals Bing Thom and Michael Heeney in a conversation with Witold Rybczynski, acclaimed writer and Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, about their body of work and their philosophy. This talk also celebrates the publication, by Princeton Architectural Press, of the firm’s first monograph, Bing Thom Works (Spring 2011), which begins with the firm’s biggest project to date: the expansion of the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. Three distinct and discrete theater venues are bonded together by a sensually curving roof and curtain wall, creating a miniature arts village in an underserved neighborhood. A series of essays reveal a philosophical and practical approach to architecture that is applicable at any scale—from designing cities to handrails. Highlights of their recent work follow, including the stately Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at the University of British Columbia, their fluid plan for Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas, the stunning Acadia Residence, and more. Bing Thom Works features an introduction by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki.

Copies of Bing Thom Works are available for purchase and signing at the event.

Bing Thom Architects (BTA), founded in 1980 in Vancouver , has executed a wide spectrum of projects in Canada , Europe and China , from single-family residences to the design of entire cities. In October 2010, BTA completed the firm’s first major US project, the new Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater in Washington, D.C., to be followed by the opening of the East Trinity campus of Tarrant County College in Fort Worth Texas, which is the first phase of the Trinity River Uptown plan, the largest urban redevelopment currently being undertaken in the United States. Some of the firm’s other recent and current projects include Central City and Surrey City Center Library, both in Surrey , British Columbia ; and The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver . Bing Thom Architects has also been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the 2010 Architectural Firm Award from The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, the most prestigious honor that can be awarded to a Canadian architectural practice.

Witold Rybczynski, born in Edinburgh, raised in Canada, and currently living in Philadelphia, is the Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written on architecture and urbanism for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Slate, and is the author of the critically acclaimed Home and the A Clearing in the Distance, a biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, for which he was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. He is the recipient of the National Building Museum's 2007 Vincent Scully Prize.

Initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, Architectural Explorations in Books is a new series of engaging programs delving into the critical role that architecture books play in the understanding of contemporary urban developments and structures. The events feature book presentations and discussions by acclaimed architects, critics, curators, designers, photographers and writers.