Arthur Erickson was a mediocre architect at best. Blind adulation turned self-serving manipulation does not change that.

None of this work dealt with the autochthonous condition: which was, his supposed mentor’s, base approach.

Vancouver, nay, Canada needed a hero back then and, bland, derivative Arthur’s stuff was it. We do not need him now!

That the banal, Ritz-Carlton cliché twist came out of a real estate mind set does not surprise. Arthur’s legacy would have been better served has Rennie kept his meddling face out of it!

To go back . . .

Essentially Milkovich’s smooth, non-committal, ghost like drawings of a Ronald Coleman type delusion on the top of Burnaby Mountain set Arthur on course: I’m talking his SFU winning design. SFU downtown campus remedied that.

But before that Arthur was able to beguile a gullible architectural community with his ridiculous Arabian-cum-Edward D. Stone type sun-screen he attached to his Filberg House in Comox.

I was a VAG trustee at the time and persuaded the board to accept his back yard entrance. After that it was down hill.

The Vancouver Courthouse is an absolute urban disaster: surrounded by relentless, blank, cold concrete walls, it was at the time dubbed as Wacky Bennett’s tower laid on its side: it still is. The westward sloping skylight is a boring unrelieved skyline over a roof top garden that no one is aware of.

His Canadian embassy in Washington DC is a joke. What is that round of columns at the entrance? Is it supposed to replicate the Jefferson monument? If, indeed, it is then it is far too weak!

I visited his home on W14 and with him at his office on the Fairview slopes. As for his person, bland like his building, I was not impressed.

Nor am I surprised to hear of a squabbling coterie of hangers clinging to his reflected glory: all the usual suspects! That merely illuminates the hunger of a local obsequious glitterati doesn’t it?

It’s time for Canada to stop this indiscriminate hero worship and start generating some good urbanism and forget childish heroes who only make our cities worse! Vancouver architect s are not the worst in the world but . . .

May Arthur Erickson rest in peace despite the objectionable clique of little hangers on, apparently, intent upon making hay out of an obviously second rate personality.

I agree with you David..
Let me share a story, told to me by my brother, after he attended Arthur’s Memorial service. “My brother watched a Raven (Crow?) and a yellow butterfly flying around together on the lawn during Arthur’s service, causing my poor brother a bit of a distraction. they stayed for the entire event, at the close of the service, off they flew, making the day fabulous, and leaving a beautiful memory just the way Arthur would have wanted it….Perhaps since we are talking about Arthur here, it probably was a Raven

“Transfiguring light, and [clues from] site.”

These were AE’s words in a lecture I attended in the 90s regarding the design process. They have stuck with me more than any other utterance by any other architect I’ve seen.

@ Bill Smolick: AE’s response to your proto-typical line was, “Show me a roof that doesn’t leak sometime.”

@ Urbbie: AE invited scrutity of his work, and has borne the consequent mix of praise and criticism (I’d say the praise wins). Your comments lead me to ask, Would you invite even a portion of the scrutity of your life work and personality that Erickson experienced?

If anybody around here had a better design for the UBC Anthro Museum I didn’t see it. Keorner Library is very fine too.

I thought so, Urbbie.

We are a land that turns out difficult artists, and then treats them badly… Emily Carr and Arthur Erickson.

Yet, passing time will put our folly into high relief, and their gift into its proper splendour.

I studied at SFU and UBC. Both campuses are flawed for being designed to be at a remove from the city. However, there can be no comparison. SFU on the mountain is better suited to its site. Did the planners of UBC ever notice they had a great site too? Hardly seems possible. There is both a sense of community, and an understanding of the climate—be it sunny spring or foggy winter—that makes the mountain top experience remarkable.

Erickson was not of the generation of architects that understood urbanism. So, we have to see the Robson Courthouse with historical perspective. The idea of dropping water falls over skylights, and designing “stramps” (stairs and ramps) seems today like pure inspiration. The ramp cutting through adds the visual accent of the climbing diagonal to the pyramidal massing of the stair.

Waterfall over the skylight? Are you kidding me! Well, the knock on Erickson and Frank Lloyd Wright was that their buildings leaked… Why not give critics the “bird” and a rarified vision of the British Columbia landscape all in the same picture?

The Canadian Embassy in Washington will age well. Trudeau pulled one out of the hat when he hand-picked Erickson for his architect. Oh, the Jefferson Monument-redux doesn’t work. The connection to the park alongside is awkward. But, if you tune into George Stephanopolous “This Week” on a Sunday morning, you can mute the sound and stare in amazement at the precision with which the light and shadow plays on the portions of the building as it is revealed through the window that is the backdrop of the studio set.

I think the Museum of Anthropology, seen from the back at sunset, with the reflecting pool full of water, is the single best piece of Canadian architecture.

Yes, we can point out flaws. We can complain about the relationship to the road and the parking lot. But what are we to say about the way concrete folds down to form the beams of the main structure? Nothing—because if we are paying attention, we will be speechless.

And then we have to give some account of the poetry of the MacMillan Blodel building. The two rectangular slabs that slip past each other, and what observers sometimes call the “waffle iron” façade. The vertical elements between the windows taper as they rise up, standing as a metaphor for the Douglas Fir. Apparently, the task of forming a column that changes dimension at every floor proved almost too much for the construction company awarded the job. But, we have the result to ponder. Is there a more elegant front on our suffering Georgia Street? Is there a building that makes more intelligent use of proportion in our city?

I have a VHS tape of a one-hour show on PBS documenting the 1980’s competition for the Chicago Public Library—awarded to Thomas Beeby, a local architect who turned out a disappointing Post Modernist block heavily quoting Grand Central Station in NYC. Erickson’s proposal, on the other hand, was completely futuristic. The models from his office seen in the documentary show an incessant preoccupation with manipulating form. Fate twisted. The Americans got the library they deserved, and we lost the opportunity to see a new side of Erickson.

The waterfall building on the western entrance to Granville Island is another place where we can come to terms with architecture as human expression. A curtain of water falls to put some distance between the street that modernism turned a back on, and the great effort to create a Moorish cortile on the inside. We cross only to be challenged by the pyramid entrance to a gallery that is improbably cut through by a plane of glass. The residential units in the building are inventive, and circular exterior stairs brashly announce it. Again, there are elements that we might object to as urbanism. But we would be fools to do so, the piece as a whole is so much greater than the sum of the parts.

It came as a surprise to me that Erickson designed one of the first strata titles in the Lower Mainland. A row of townhouses perched halfway up Clark Hill on the path for the tunnel section of the ill fated Evergreen Line. Yes, there is a parking lot on the front side that may bruise contemporary sensibilities. However, looking at this set of buildings gently set on the undisturbed natural slope of the hillside, contemporary ideas of “sustainability” come wide open.

There is so much joy in the act of creation that emanates from Erickson’s work that we must still our knee-jerk objections long enough for our senses to have the time to ponder.

We were blessed for having him in our midst.

Errrrrrrr . . . ummmmmm . . . wot do they say about academia?

THE COMPETITION IS SO FIERCE BECAUSE THE STAKES ARE SO LOW!

. . . .

We agree once more, Urbie. The modernists did not know how to do streetwall, or to be one of a crowd. But I know good art when I see it. In our far away land, Robson Square—warts and all—adds something unique to our city.

Abraham Rogatnick had a hilarious anecdote from Erickson’s days teaching at UBC the School of Architecture about “rear entry”.

Architecture is not all urbanism, else what are we to do with Bramante’s Tiempietto or his clioster for Santa Maria della Pace? (Both in Rome)

As far as the little building on Maiden Lane, San Francisco, it is the experience of the interior that soars. Yes, Frank could acquit himself on the street, although the Guggenheim in NYC is many parts bizarre as well as wonderful.

Falling Water reminds us that Erickson’s private houses are a significant part of the work which I and many others have not seen.

It’s getting pretty crowded always being on the same page, Urbie. Consensus has its price:

“[A]rchitecture is irrevocably intertwined with urbanism…”

I might quibble that we’re getting the cart before the horse, but essentially—agreed.

However, we are “past” modernism now, and the view in the rear view mirror presents the rush to the new, and the frenzy of the new technology, as a period in time when more than few things were got wrong. A blessing really, or else there would be nothing left for us to do.

I think we also agree that the humanist values applied to the city are one of those elements almost entirely missing from the modernist movement. In Europe, you don’t miss it so much because you can always look in another direction and seek another experience.

Don’t like the SAS building in Copenhagen? No matter. Stroll over to the Ströget or Nyhaven and leave the tower behind.

However, here in the west of North America, which it is not an exaggeration to say was built entirely within the modern age (if we push date that back to say, the rise of Napoleon or the coming of the iron rails), the lack of human scale in the public realm is poverty of the first rank. It contaminates everything it touches. Entire generations have come and gone not knowing anything more than the grid, and soon we will be able to extend that comment to include the sprawl.

Therefore, ours is a project of recovery.

However, we would be fools not to enjoy good work, even if it is from an age now past.

I spent almost 8 years at SFU campus in Burnaby and the stunning architecture got into my bones. Got to know it from every angle and through many fine teachers, events, performances and all that is student life. Have to say that the stunning architecture gave the place a sense of possibility, beauty and good campact design.

I hired Arthur Erickson as one of the two master architects for the Bayshore project. It wasn’t my first choice. My first choice was Hotson Bakker, but the client liked the prestige that he thought would come with Erickson’s name. When the plan was completed, Hotson continued, but Erickson did not.

When I started the planning for the new community at SFU, I was determined not to work with Erickson again. I did not think we could ever expect a ‘fine grained’ village community feeling from his master planning and building designs. He was also most scornful of having to work with private developers.

At the same time, I did think it was important to respect, and relate to the architectural character of the SFU Campus in the planning and design of the new community. This should not be ignored.

When I told one former university president that Arthur was not happy with what he feared I might do to his university, the President responded…tell him it’s no longer his university.

Frances Bula subsequently wrote an article about Arthurs War with me in the Vancouver Sun (which I can’t find) and Trevor Boddy also piped in with a Globe and Mail story…Arthur is not amused… http://www.mpcintelligence.ca/resources/docuploads/2006/11/27/Arthur%20was%20not%20amused.pdf

Now that the community is taking shape it is interesting to reflect on the validity of Arthur’s fears. Furthermore, while I was not always a fan of his buildings, (I don’t like the American Embassy, nor much of the Waterfall building) I did admire the man for raising the status of architecture and the architect. He is, after all, just Arthur!