Arthur Erickson Quotes
An internationally celebrated Canadian architect and urban planner.
(1924 - 2009)
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After 1980, you never heard reference to space again. Surface, the most convincing evidence of the descent into materialism, became the focus of design. Space disappeared.
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Ancient Rome was as confident of the immutability of its world and the continual expansion and improvement of the human lot as we are today.
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Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building.
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Bankers cannot afford to be concerned with only the economic aspects of projects. There may be serious implications on the natural environment, the urban environment, on human culture.
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Builders eventually took advantage of the look of modernism to build cheaply and carelessly.
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Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind.
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Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?
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God's designs may be frequent justification for our actions, but it is we, the self-made men, who take the credit.
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Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart.
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I plead for conservation of human culture, which is much more fragile than nature herself. We needn't destroy other cultures with the force of our own.
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Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
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In those countries with centuries of a craft tradition behind their building methods, techniques are tightly coordinated under the direction of the architect.
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Inspiration in Science may have to do with ideas, but not in Art. In art it is in the senses that are instinctively responsive to the medium of expression.
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It is the mystery of the creative act that something other than our conscious self takes over.
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Life is rich, always changing, always challenging, and we architects have the task of transmitting into wood, concrete, glass and steel, of transforming human aspirations into habitable and meaningful space.
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Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.
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Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.
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Nearly all of the advances in structural and aesthetic innovation is coming from abroad.
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No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly.
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No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems.
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