Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:34:00

A cylinder of zinc, glass and concrete in a rhododendron forest holds some of North America's finest acoustics. The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at 6265 Crescent Road, on the University of British Columbia campus at the tip of Vancouver's Point Grey peninsula, opened on 11 May 1997 after a two-year, 25-million-dollar build funded by the Chan Foundation of Canada, BC Tel (now Telus), the Royal Bank and the Province of British Columbia. Brothers Tom and Caleb Chan, honouring the generosity of their Hong Kong industrialist father, approached UBC president David Strangway in the early 1990s with the founding gift; Vancouver's Bing Thom - one of Canada's most celebrated architects - designed the building, with New York's ARTEC Consultants engineering the concert hall and Theatre Projects Consultants shaping the studio theatre. Three venues share the drum: the 1,185-seat Chan Shun Concert Hall (plus a 180-seat choral loft), the flexible Telus Studio Theatre, and the 160-seat Royal Bank Cinema, linked by a glass lobby that looks into the evergreens. The concert hall is the jewel - a shoebox inspired by the cello, with reverse-fan concrete walls, maple surfaces, motorised sound-absorbing banners and a 22.7-tonne adjustable acoustic canopy hanging like a chandelier, allowing the room to be tuned from chamber recital to full orchestra with chorus. The programming built an international reputation fast: the CBC Radio Orchestra made the hall its home for a decade, the Vancouver Symphony, Vancouver Recital Society and Early Music Vancouver perform regularly, and the Chan Centre's own presented season brings global jazz, classical, world music and spoken-word artists to campus alongside the UBC music, film and theatre departments' classes, rehearsals and productions. Set beside the Museum of Anthropology and the Rose Garden, twenty minutes from downtown, the building is routinely ranked among North America's premier performing arts centres - a philanthropic gift that gave Vancouver a world-class hall and gave UBC students the run of it.