Architect Thang Do misplaced his battle with lung most cancers earlier this month at age 62, however the Saratoga resident left an essential legacy in San Jose.
A Vietnamese immigrant, he was on the helm of Aedis Architects for the previous 30 years. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, in saying Do’s dying on Fb, referred to as him a large of our neighborhood and mentioned he “bestowed magnificence on our metropolis with every little thing he designed at Aedis Structure, with a ardour for sustainability and for telling every neighborhood’s distinctive story.”
I received to know him as we had been each members of American Management Discussion board’s Urbanist community. For the previous yr, I often joined Thang and others for lunch. His spouse, Grace Liu, mentioned the gathering was a spotlight of his latest weeks. Regardless of his sickness, his optimism by no means waned — about his life and about San Jose.
I’ll level out simply two locations he created to see his imaginative and prescient for this metropolis. One was Santa Clara County’s Vietnamese American Service Middle on Senter Highway, which was accomplished final yr. The middle — which features a well being clinic, assembly rooms and youngster care services — might have been simply one other drab constructing, however it's a colourful construction with so many nods to Vietnamese tradition in its design. It provides San Jose’s Vietnamese American inhabitants — the most important on the earth exterior Vietnam — a connection to their homeland, even when they'd by no means been there. Thang additionally was an instrumental board member of PIVOT, a Vietnamese American progressive group that grew to become very lively in the course of the latest wave of anti-Asian sentiment.
The opposite facet of Thang’s optimism may be seen at SoFA Market, a meals corridor on South First Avenue proper subsequent to the Aedis Architects places of work. The horseshoe-shaped inside is house to a various assortment of eateries — Vietnoms, Umi Hand Roll, Habana Cuba, Hawaiian Poke Bowl and extra — together with the Fountainhead Bar, which serves up cocktails names after architects or their creations. I requested Do about naming the bar after an Ayn Rand e-book and I bear in mind him telling me it had nothing to do with conservative politics — simply the e-book’s heavy emphasis on structure that impressed generations of builders, himself included.
He needed to create an area downtown the place folks might come collectively over meals or drink to share concepts and laughter. He succeeded.
Practically two dozen members of American Management Discussion board’s Urbanist group received collectively at SoFA Marketplace for lunch this week to share our recollections of Thang Do, and one particular person there recalled Thang’s want to push again on builders who weren’t reaching far sufficient of their designs. “He at all times thought San Jose deserved higher,” she recalled.
ENCHANTED COLLABORATION: New Ballet Director Dalia Rawson has choreographed a reimagined manufacturing of “La Boutique Fantasque” — or “The Enchanted Toyshop” — which might be carried out Might 22 on the Hammer Theatre Middle in downtown San Jose. That reimagining of the unique 1919 manufacturing included a collaboration between Rawson and animator Atlquetzalli “Ketzi” Rivera, who created scenes in an anime type that might be included on-stage with the reside dancers so as to add a bit of caprice to the manufacturing.
Rivera, who's from Veracruz, Mexico, and Rawson met enjoying video video games on-line and received to know one another professionally when she created animated work for the documentary, “Ruth Weis: Beat Goddess,” which featured a dancer from New Ballet and performed at Cinequest in 2020.
“La Boutique Fantasque” has two performances Sunday: a particular, one-hour efficiency at 11 a.m. geared for households with toddlers and preschoolers, and a daily present at 2 p.m. geared for the entire household. You will get extra data and tickets at www.newballet.com.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN: State Sen. Dave Cortese might be loading a bus with training advocates, lecturers and college students Wednesday morning to drive them from San Jose to Sacramento to fulfill with elected officers and their staffs about retaining public training a price range precedence. In fact, first on that checklist of greater than a dozen officers is Cortese himself, who began this Might custom practically twenty years in the past — properly earlier than he had an workplace on the State Capitol.