Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Encyclopedia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
near Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. It is situated within the natural landscape of the campus and is surrounded by evergreen
Evergreen
In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves in all seasons. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage during the winter or dry season.There are many different kinds of evergreen plants, both trees and shrubs...
s and rhododendron
Rhododendron
Rhododendron is a genus of over 1 000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers...
s. This state of the art performing arts venue holds the 1,200-seat Chan Shun Concert Hall, the flexible-seating Telus Studio Theatre, the 160-seat Royal Bank Cinema, the Great Performers Lounge, and a glass lobby. Completed in 1997, the Chan Centre hosts classes, rehearsals and performances for a variety of the UBC departments of music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
as well as a diverse, yearly performing arts season that attracts audiences from all over the Lower Mainland
Lower Mainland
The Lower Mainland is a name commonly applied to the region surrounding and including Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. As of 2007, 2,524,113 people live in the region; sixteen of the province's thirty most populous municipalities are located there.While the term Lower Mainland has been...
.
History
The Chan brothers are philanthropists
Philanthropy
Philanthropy etymologically means "the love of humanity"—love in the sense of caring for, nourishing, developing, or enhancing; humanity in the sense of "what it is to be human," or "human potential." In modern practical terms, it is "private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of...
, businessmen
Businessperson
A businessperson is someone involved in a particular undertaking of activities for the purpose of generating revenue from a combination of human, financial, or physical capital. An entrepreneur is an example of a business person...
and Christians. Their father, Chan Shun, worked his way up in the business world, from sewing in a shirt factory to eventually becoming the head of the Crocodile shirt company. His sons were strongly influenced by his morals and generosity and in the 1980s, after immigrating to Canada, they decided to give back to their new country by helping to build an educational arts facility at UBC. They approached president David Strangway
David Strangway
David William Strangway, OC, FRSC is a Canadian Geophysicist and University Administrator. Strangway is the founder, first President and first Chancellor of Quest University Canada, a private non-profit liberal arts and sciences university in Squamish, British Columbia which opened in September...
(president of UBC from 1985–1997) and made the proposal, and soon, the concept for a performing arts
Performing arts
The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...
centre was in motion.
The construction of the Chan Centre took 2 years to complete and the official opening occurred on May 11, 1997. The cost came to approximately $25 million dollars with donations from the Chan Foundation of Canada, BC Tel (now Telus
TELUS
Telus is a national telecommunications company in Canada that provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services including internet access, voice, entertainment, video, and satellite television. The company is based in Burnaby, British Columbia, part of Greater Vancouver...
), the Royal Bank of Canada
Royal Bank of Canada
The Royal Bank of Canada or RBC Financial Group is the largest financial institution in Canada, as measured by deposits, revenues, and market capitalization. The bank serves seventeen million clients and has 80,100 employees worldwide. The company corporate headquarters are located in Toronto,...
and the Provincial Government of British Columbia.
Architecture
The Chan Centre was a collaborative project between three companies; Bing Thom ArchitectsBing Thom Architects
Bing Thom Architects was founded in 1981 and is located in Vancouver, British Columbia.The firm includes 2 principals, Bing Thom and Michael Heeney, 6 Associate Directors, 28 registered, graduate and student architects, urban designers and planners, in addition to a support staff of 5.The firm...
from Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
created the overall building design, Artec Consultants in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
designed the concert hall and acoustic specifications and Theatre Projects Consultants designed the studio theatre.
Heading the team of architects was Vancouver's own Bing Thom. ARTEC’s team was led by world renowned acoustician, Russell Johnson. Together Johnson and Thom worked to design the Chan Centre from the inside out in order to create optimum acoustics for the concert hall.
Venues
Chan Shun Concert Hall
The highlight of the Chan Centre is the Chan Shun Concert Hall. It was named after Tom and Caleb's father, Chan Shun, to honour his life-long generosity. The concert hall has a capacity of 1,185 plus 180 choralChoir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
loft seats which can be used if necessary.
Hanging like a chandelier
Chandelier
A chandelier is a branched decorative ceiling-mounted light fixture with two or more arms bearing lights. Chandeliers are often ornate, containing dozens of lamps and complex arrays of glass or crystal prisms to illuminate a room with refracted light...
over the stage of the concert hall is the 37-tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
acoustic canopy
Architectural acoustics
Architectural acoustics is the science of noise control within buildings. The first application of architectural acoustics was in the design of opera houses and then concert halls. More widely, noise suppression is critical in the design of multi-unit dwellings and business premises that generate...
, a sound reflector made of steel and cork which can be adjusted in height by a small motor. The hall also features motorized sound-absorbent
Sound baffle
A sound baffle is a construction or device which reduces the strength of airborne sound. Sound baffles are a fundamental tool of noise mitigation, the practice of minimizing noise pollution or reverberation. An important type of sound baffle is the noise barrier constructed along highways to...
fabric banners to acoustically mask walls. Flexibility and adaptability are key features in the design of the concert hall. The cello-like shape of the hall comes from the acoustically successful shoe box shape which allows for an even distribution of sound throughout the performance space. This shape also allows for a more consistent sound experience for audience members, no matter where they are sitting in the hall.
The Chan Centre was constructed with over 6,500 cubic metres of concrete which can be seen throughout the building. In the concert hall, the concrete walls are convex, and have been jack hammered to create a stippled surface which helps to break down sound and prevent reverb; it also promotes a warm and intimate sound. All of the wood seen in the concert hall has been sealed to the concrete in order to prevent any sympathetic vibrations.
Telus Studio Theatre
Modeled after the Globe TheatreGlobe Theatre
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, this intimate and flexible studio theatre seats between 160-275 people depending on the seating configuration. The theatre holds 12 – 3 level seating towers which can be moved using an air castor system, a technique used by Boeing
Boeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
to move airplane parts. Compressed air is blown through tubes and the towers then hover approximately 1/2 inch above the ground and are moved into configuration by 4-6 people.
Although theatre productions, both from within the UBC Theatre Department and from the community, are the prevalent art form programmed in the studio theatre, it has also become a popular venue for small music ensembles, film shoots, CD release parties and dance recitals.
Royal Bank Cinema
The small, 160-seat cinema has multiple projection capabilities, including: Super 8Super 8 mm film
Super 8 mm film is a motion picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement of the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format....
, Xenon Slide projection, DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
, 16 mm and 36 mm. Although it is used primarily as a classroom for UBC film students, it also hosts conferences and has been the venue for the European Union Film Festival.
Television appearances
The building has featured in several television shows. It was used as "The 4400 Center" in several episodes of The 4400The 4400
The 4400 is a science fiction TV series produced by CBS Paramount Network Television in association with Sky Television, Renegade 83, and American Zoetrope for USA Network. The show was created and written by Scott Peters and René Echevarria, and it stars Joel Gretsch and Jacqueline McKenzie...
, and as the location for the "World Tolerance Initiative Annual Conference 2010" in season 2 episode 14 of Fringe
Fringe (TV series)
Fringe is an American science fiction television series created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The series follows a Federal Bureau of Investigation "Fringe Division" team based in Boston, Massachusetts under the supervision of Homeland Security...
. As well in the series of Stargate Atlantis, season 2 episode 5. In the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)
Battlestar Galactica is an American military science fiction television series, and part of the Battlestar Galactica franchise. The show was developed by Ronald D. Moore as a re-imagining of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series created by Glen A. Larson...
it is a building in the Cloud 9 luxury ship, and was used as the meeting place for the Quorum of Twelve
Quorum of Twelve
The Quorum of Twelve is a fictional governing body of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol on the two Battlestar Galactica television series. In both series, it was composed of one representative from each colony.Series creator Glen A...
. In 2008, It was shown again, but this time, as The Madacorp building in the ABC Family show Kyle XY. Where Kyle, Declan, and Tom Foss were seen at in the episode called "House of Cards" and then it was later seen again in the episode called "C.I.R., With Love", when the whole Trager family go to The Madacorp Open House with Stephen.