One of Richmond’s most iconic places of worship has been named among B.C.’s top 100 favourite buildings.
The Ling Yen Mountain Temple, one of many religious buildings adorning Richmond’s “Highway to Heaven,” was included in BC’s Best Buildings Contest held by the Architecture Foundation of BC.
The contest marked 100 years of architecture as a profession in B.C. and drew more than 450 nominations. The public was then invited to vote online for their favourite buildings, identifying the most popular with more than 4,000 casting their votes. From those, a judging panel met to determine the top three in each region of the province.
Ling Yen Mountain Temple received 230 votes, good enough for second place in the Southern Region category, behind the Wing Sang Building in Vancouver, which received 522 votes, and in front of third place finisher BC Place Stadium with 216 votes.
The Ling Yen Mountain Temple is a Buddhist monastery, designed by Pacific Rim Architecture in the Chinese palatial style and was completed in 1996. It has about 10,000 members in Greater Vancouver and several dozen resident monastics.
The most popular building overall in the contest was judged to be the Mission Hill Winery in Kelowna which received 1,007 votes to top the Interior Region category.
The Empress Hotel in Victoria (375 votes) took top honours in the Vancouver Island category, while The Igloo on Hwy. 16 in Smithers (309 votes) topped the Interior Region category.
“We all have our favourite buildings; buildings with architectural lines we love, old houses with decades of memories and shops that invite us in; buildings that have become touchstones in our lives,” said David M. Hewitt, AFBC chair said in a news release announcing the winners. “When the Foundation asked British Columbians to tell us which were their favourite buildings, they responded resoundingly and those results are now in.”
While drawing praise from the public and architectural community, Ling Yen Mountain Temple has had its detractors, specifically regarding its future expansion plans.
At issue is re-zoning for the expansion by building a 200,000-square-foot facility next to its existing temple on the No. 5 Road backlands, which are protected in the Agricultural Land Reserve.
In its latest of several proposals (which began 10 years ago), the main temple hall would be 99 feet tall, roughly one-third the height of its initial proposal, but still 2.5 times higher than what the present zoning allows.
The issue currently remains before city council.
