By the way, this is one of the best-designed mix-use mega highrise projects I’ve seen anywhere. It’s simple and modern. It’s done by a Beijing-born Japanese architect, Riken Yamamoto. It’s like a New York loft apartment building done in the style of a typical Vancouver building. Quite handsome. And the massive complex as a whole creates very interesting visual textures at the street level.

Beijing and China have finally moved away from tacky architecture, but they’re unfortunately still stuck in the mindset of using tacky English names for their great new bulidings. The current buzzwords seem to be “Soho” and “MoMA.” Everything is Soho-this, or MOMA-that. They’re co-opting these place names from NYC to lend cachet to their projects.