Bing Thom, the world renown architect best known in D.C. for designing the new Arena Stage, died Tuesday from a brain aneurysm, his firm announced. He was 75.
In a statement posted to the Bing Thom Architects website, Bonnie Thom wrote that her husband of more than 50 years died at Eastern Hospital in his native Hong Kong.
In the statement, Bonnie Thom wrote that the Mead Centre for American Theater at Arena Stage “transformed Southwest Washington D.C.”
The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott wrote in 2010 of Thom’s design: “Thom’s new building is unlike anything that has been built in the District. It took an outsider, a Canadian architect, to break with the usual habits of large civic architecture in the nation’s capital. Thom has managed to design a structure that takes seriously the moral imperatives of contemporary architecture — sustainability, preservation, social transparency and fidelity to the needs of the client — without falling into cliche, empty bombast or hollow functionality. He has built a grand space, but with curves and lightness, that should function well as a performing arts center and even better as a catalyst to the neighborhood around it.”
Thom’s Vancouver, British Columbia-based firm, which has an office in Georgetown, was also responsible for the new master plan for The Blairs, the 27-acre high-rise apartment community in Silver Spring, on behalf of the Tower Cos. The firm also participated in a design competition for the renovation of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and it designed the D.C. Public Library's new Woodridge branch.
"I am truly saddened to learn about the sudden passing of Bing Thom," Richard Reyes-Gavilan, DCPL's executive director, said in a statement. "DC Public Library will be forever grateful for his inspiring design of our beautiful new Woodridge Library. He was a larger-than-life architect that clearly took joy in designing spaces for community. He will be missed."
Bonnie Thom said of her husband, “Bing believed architecture transcends the building, to shine its light on to its whole surroundings. He was so happy his architects also pursue this adventure of ‘building beyond buildings.’”