When it comes to building homes, Bing Thom can afford to be picky. Best known locally for his work on the University of British Columbia's Chan Centre for the Performing Arts and Richmond's Aberdeen Centre, Thom's residential designs have become something of a coveted commodity among Vancouver homeowners.
Mr. Thom has designed only a handful of Vancouver homes since starting his firm, Bing Thom Architects, in 1980, many of which have garnered acclaim -- and none of which he has taken on without careful consideration. The firm's most recent residential project, referred to simply as "L1," was no exception.
"We actually interviewed the client as much as they interviewed us," says Mr. Thom from the comfortable elegance of his Vancouver office, a space befitting the visionary's polo shirt-clad figure and easy smile. "We don't build homes for money, we do it for love. So unless we and the client have common values, we're not interested in the project."
What ultimately convinced Mr. Thom to partner with the L1 owners (a couple recently immigrated from China) was the respectfulness of their approach.
Bing Thom's L1 house was short-listed for the 2006 Lieutenan-Governor of British Columbia's Award of Excellence in Architecture. Located in the middle of a residential block, the building and landscape integrate to create a serene, intimate world within a dense community context. The house was designed as a series of pavilions, with each one having its own focused view of the garden. By night, the house glows like a lantern.
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"The husband basically said: 'Look, I have two children, so we need three bedrooms -- the rest is up to you,' " Mr. Thom shrugs in recollection.
"We were inspired by the tremendous trust they placed in us."
The "us" in this equation amounted to a team led by Mr. Thom himself and project architect Dan Du. The creative process was ultimately motivated by the team's desire to make a highly personalized space.
"We didn't want to build a pseudo-Chinese home," Mr. Thom explains.
"But obviously we wanted to make it comfortable for this family with a Chinese background."
From that aim came a design philosophy as unique to the North American architectural milieu as it is unusual: that of moving from the outside in, and planning the garden first.
"Many Chinese homes are treated as pavilions in a garden," explains Mr. Thom, evoking an internal space that encourages, rather than inhibits, interaction with the external environment. The challenge posed by the L1 site was its placement in a typical, flat suburban area with little to speak of in the way of views.
"The neighbourhood has very few natural aspects that we could use as a catalyst to design the home," Mr. Du says.
"That's why the garden concept was so important -- it acted like an anchor for us."
Mr. Thom and Mr. Du chose a Suzhou (pronounced "Su-jo") garden landscape to fill the long, rectangular site.
With a name derived from the Chinese city of its origin, a Suzhou garden is known for the delicacy, simplicity, and intimacy of their settings. In keeping with the Suzhou's characteristic use of water, a large pond was excavated on the site, enhancing the serenity of the landscape.
Rather than rely on the detached omniscience of a plan, Mr. Thom and Mr. Du designed the garden through a series of sketches and paintings representing views they imagined as existing from inside the future home.
"We literally picked every tree," Mr. Thom says. "We put ourselves into a room, looking out a window, and decided what we wanted to see from that window -- then we went to find the particular tree to fit that view."
Every detail, from the size and texture of leaves in relation to their neighbours to the affinity between the colours of the garden and the colours of the home, was considered. And considered again.
"We render our sketches to reflect seasonal changes in order to help the client understand how the garden works," explains Mr. Du, unrolling a collection of scarlet, green and gold splashes framed in the scrawled outlines of windows.
Integrating neighbouring treescapes through a skillful use of layering, angles and height (a process known as "borrowing landscape"), Mr. Thom and Mr. Du planned an escalation of plant life that would appear to spill up and over the garden wall -- so much so that the wall itself (and the world beyond) would become obsolete, lost in a sense of infinite depth.
"On the other hand," Mr. Thom says, "we wanted to create a sense of privacy with the garden. So the obvious thing was to position the front door in such a way that discovering the garden would be a surprise, rather than something obvious." Discretely tucked along the property's western border, the entrance to the home is accessible only by a narrow, alley-like walkway of slate paving stones.
"This is where the contraction of the home begins," says Mr. Du on a visit to the site, gesturing along the walk and the caressing arbor of trees above.
