Chan Centre for the Performing Arts

Bing Thom's Concert Hall

The Chan Centre opened on the UBC campus in 1997, launching that May. Vancouver's Bing Thom Architects designed it, with the concert hall's acoustics led by Artec Consultants of New York and the studio theatre developed with Theatre Projects Consultants. The roughly $25-million project drew support from the Chan Foundation of Canada, BC Tel (now Telus), the Royal Bank of Canada, and matching funds from the Province.

Three Rooms Under One Roof

The complex holds three spaces. The flagship Chan Shun Concert Hall seats about 1,185, with roughly 180 more in a choral loft behind the stage. The reconfigurable Telus Studio Theatre holds up to about 275 depending on layout, and the Royal Bank Cinema seats around 160.

Tuned Like an Instrument

The concert hall takes its shape from a cello, with curved blond-maple walls and the audience seated inside the reverberation chamber; Artec's acousticians shaped the sound envelope first and the architecture followed. A suspended acoustic canopy hangs over the stage and raises or lowers to retune the room for different ensembles. The hall is widely cited among the most acoustically refined in North America.

A Season in the Forest

Beyond serving UBC's music, film, and theatre programs, the Chan Centre runs a yearly performing-arts season that pulls audiences from across the Lower Mainland. Its bookings lean toward contemporary artists in world music, folk, and jazz, with past performers including Jeremy Dutcher, Oumou Sangaré, Anoushka Shankar, Rhiannon Giddens, and Jon Batiste. A glass-walled lobby with 18-foot canted windows opens onto the surrounding forest at the western edge of campus.