Arthur Erickson (1924 – 2009)
Today I learned Arthur Erickson has died.
Mr Erickson was my favorite architect whenever I visited Vancouver. He brought 1970s concrete architecture to a completely new level. He sort of was a running gag when walking through town. Sometimes it looked every building of grey concrete was his. Either that or there are a lot of copy-cats around. Truth be told, in a city with a lot of 1980s speculants’ throw-away-architecture, Mr Erickson sturdy buildings had a lot of things going for, most notably the human scale. These days we tend to not like concrete but he called it the 20th century marble. Mr Erickson built concrete buildings without any ornamentation but still they had a lot toshow for. My all time favorites are the Law Courts in downtown Vancouver and the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. The last has the wonderful rotunda especially designed for Bill Reid’s The Raven sculpture (for those of you living on the east coast of Canada, Bill Reid is the guy from the 20 dollar bill). According to legend Mr Erickson designed the pavilion without knowing what Mr Reid was creating and vice versa. I never saw a space and its contents in such perfect harmony. That shows genious.
Arthur Erickson was 84 and died of the consequences of Alzheimer’s disease.
