Arthur Erickson Quotes

• There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to its early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization.

  Arthur Erickson

• The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning.

  Arthur Erickson

• The tourist transports his own values and demands to his destinations and implants them like an infectious disease, decimating whatever values existed before.

  Arthur Erickson

• The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events.

  Arthur Erickson

• The obsession with performance left no room for the development of the intuitive or spiritual impact of space and form other than the aesthetic of the machine itself.

  Arthur Erickson

• The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe.

  Arthur Erickson

• The innovative spirit was America’s strongest attribute, transforming everything into a brave new world, but there lingered an insecurity about the arts.

  Arthur Erickson

• The heart, not the head, must be the guide.

  Arthur Erickson

• The great dream merchant Disney was a success because make-believe was what everyone seemed to need in a spiritually empty land.

  Arthur Erickson

• The essentially unchangeable established order of things slowly disappeared and was forgotten for a while completely

  Arthur Erickson

• The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line.

  Arthur Erickson

• The delusion of entertainment is devoid of meaning. It may amuse us for a bit, but after the initial hit we are left with the dark feeling of desolation.

  Arthur Erickson

• The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process.

  Arthur Erickson

• The Achilles Heel of the Americas was the lack of cultural confidence typical of new settlers.

  Arthur Erickson

• Tahiti has been spoiled for many years, but Bali is one of the few cultures with origins in one of the great ancient cultures which is still alive.

  Arthur Erickson

• Roman civilization had achieved, within the bounds of its technology, relatively as great a mastery of time and space as we have achieved today.

  Arthur Erickson

• Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression.

  Arthur Erickson

• Part of our western outlook stems from the scientific attitude and its method of isolating the parts of a phenomenon in order to analyze them.

  Arthur Erickson

• Our universities advocate fragmentation in their course systems.

  Arthur Erickson

• Our settlement of land is without regard to the best use of land.

  Arthur Erickson

Arthur Erickson (64)

Birth:	14th June, 1924
Death:	20th May, 2009
Nationality:	Canadian
Profession:	Architect

About

Arthur Charles Erickson was born in Vancouver. He was a Canadian architect and urban planner. He studied Asian languages at the University of British Columbia, and later earned a degree in architecture from McGill University.  After graduating from McGill in 1950, Erickson traveled a few years then taught at the University of Oregon and subsequently the University of British Columbia. Erickson's buildings are often modernist concrete structures designed to respond to the natural conditions of their locations, especially climate. Many buildings, such as the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, are inspired by the post and beam architecture of the Coastal First Nations. The personal selection of Arthur Erickson as the architect for the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC by then-Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was controversial, because Trudeau overruled the objections and choices of the embassy's design committee.  In 1986, he received the AIA Gold Medal.

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Births

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Deaths

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