(Via Bing Thom Architects)

Bing Thom—a Vancouver-based architect known for dramatic work in British Columbia, China, and D.C., among other places—has died at the age of 75.

Thom suffered a brain aneurysm while in Hong Kong, where he was born, his wife said in a statement.

“Bing believed architecture transcends the building, to shine its light onto its whole surroundings,” Bonnie Thom wrote on the Bing Thom Architects website. “He was so happy his architects also pursue this adventure of ‘building beyond buildings.'”

Thom most recently completed the Woodridge Library in the District. Replacing a building that dated back to 1958, his design features the undulating curves and intrigue of an art museum with the cheer and inspiration of a visionary community space. It opened on September 28.

But Thom is best known locally for his work revamping Arena Stage. When the theater decided to expand upon their original two buildings, designed by Chicago’s Harry Weese, Thom was the only architect to ask for Arena’s mission statement, according to a New York Times story that heaped praise on his vision.

“Mr. Thom proposed maintaining the two original buildings and adding a smaller third theater, beneath a massive cantilevered roof. That meant they would become objects in a larger composition: a kind of three-ring circus under a big top,” Fred Bernstein wrote. “The arrangement recalls the Kennedy Center, two miles away, which also joins performance spaces under one huge roof; but it is covered in inch-thick marble. Mr Thom’s $100 million complex … has clear glass walls, giant timbers and exposed concrete floors, which make it almost informal.”

The soaring complex has become a fixture of the Southwest neighborhood, and it continues to impress. But as Architect magazine wrote at the time, the “dramatic sculptural qualities are rational and purposeful, not arbitrary or whimsical.”

Thom was also behind the vision to overhaul a 27-acre apartment and retail complex in Silver Spring called the Blairs.

He has been the recipient of numerous awards over his long career, among them the Order of Canada, the Golden Jubilee Medal, the Margolese Prize, and the RAIC Gold Medal, Canada’s highest architecture honor. In a statement, Bing Thom Architects writes that Thom “saw himself first as a public servant and held a fundamental belief in the transformative power of great architecture to uplift not only the physical, but also the economic and social conditions of a community.”