Inside Vancouver
The Bing Picture
By Michael Harris published Jun 1, 2008
If the architect Bing Thom wants you to see Vancouver, he'll take you away from it. At the helm of his custom-built, 35-foot sailboat, Sonja's Spirit, he maintains a disarming, quiet posture. He squints out genial smiles and pats you on the back on his way to untangle the jib, or leans back on a stanchion, leaving just two fingers on the hand-crafted tiller. That's how finely tuned this boat is.
If it were a car, it would be a Ferrari. (His actual car, an old Audi, once prompted a friend to ask whether clients were insulted when they rode in it. Thom replied, "No. I'm not interested in that kind of client.") His ease at the helm-literally and careerwise-he attributes to a daily regimen of transcendental meditation, which he's maintained for decades, having picked it up around the same time as the Beatles. He'll meditate for up to seven hours on a plane and never feel jet-lagged; he'll meditate on train rides, or on the toilet.
He's a calm skipper on dry land, too. In his Burrard Street offices, where he oversees the work of 50 people (who, collectively, come from 20 countries and speak 18 languages), the massive projects don't agitate him (a firm the size of his would normally work simultaneously on a dozen, but he takes on only half that number); neither do the accolades. Thom received an honorary PhD from UBC last month, which fits well with his 1995 Order of Canada. This month, he and two other architects (Arthur Erickson and James Cheng) will represent Vancouver at London's Festival of Architecture, the largest such event in the world. A corner of Canada House, in Trafalgar Square, will be wrapped by Thom in a kind of cedar nest, bringing Vancouverism to the world stage-his own Olympic prelude.
