‘Don’t fall behind’: Vancouver scale model business continues to innovate while on the brink of extinction
On a recent summer evening, after the sun had set, passersby couldn’t help but pause and stare through the windows of a nondescript office building in Mount Pleasant in Vancouver.
Inside, Ming Yang, 67, was hunched over, applying delicate strokes of paint to a miniature tree that he was adding to a model of a highrise building.
For more than three decades, Yang and his wife, Sharon Xie, 71, have been turning blueprints for architects and developers into micro-size, tabletop realities. Their company, AB Scale Models, one of just a few in the city that specialize in this work, have attracted clients from around the globe, including New York City, Shanghai and Dubai.
“They’ve been an important part of this experiment that is Vancouver, by building little Vancouvers ever since they started,” said Derek Newby, the managing director of architecture firm Perkins&Will. “If you look into their office windows, you get a peek into what buildings are coming most often before it even becomes public.”