I have a feature story in Vancouver magazine this month, if you haven’t spotted it yet, on local architect Peter Busby and his mission to make the world (or at least buildings and cities) more environmentally sustainable. I’ve watched and written about Peter for years and this seems to be his golden moment.
At last, after a couple of decades of pushing the enviro message, the whole world is listening. And that’s not just in Canada. Every time I talk to him these days, he’s on a different continent. (Last chat a few weeks ago, he was sitting on the lawn of his hotel in Arusha, Tanzania, where he is looking at local environmental conditions prior to making a bid to build a university there for the Aga Khan organization.)
He’s also working on subway stations in Riyadh, overseeing architectural design guidelines in Abu Dhabi, and designing the new Dubai International Finance Centre. Think of that every time you go past Broadway and Cambie and look at his new building there, a combination of glass and heavy wood beams, which is going to house Whole Foods and Lululemon and the Crossroads condos. Truly a case of thinking global, acting local.