In B.C., artists dream of bricks and mortar - Canadian Architecture News

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In B.C., artists dream of bricks and mortar

Archiseek / Canada / News / 2006 / May 13

If Toronto is the new Florence, ablaze with construction in an unprecedented cultural building boom, Vancouver is the new Venice. So says architect Bing Thom, the visionary behind a recent plan to create a so-called "cultural precinct" for the city. "Just as in the Renaissance, when Venice facilitated and expressed the meeting of the West and the Orient, today the contemporary crossroads between East and West is in Vancouver," Thom writes in a planning document that imagines the precinct as a place to celebrate and leverage Vancouver's position as North America's "Asian capital." Another similarity in Thom's comparison? Development in Venice lagged far behind Florence. That may soon start to change. Last month, Vancouver council and the B.C. government jointly announced they will each spend $5-million on the planning and initial construction of what they called a cultural "precinct."

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