Arthur Charles Erickson (June 14, 1924 – May 20, 2009) was a Canadian architect and urban planner. He is known as one of Canada's most influential architects and was the only Canadian architect to win the American Institute of Architects AIA Gold Medal. When told of Erickson's award, Philip Johnson said, "Arthur Erickson is by far the greatest architect in Canada, and he may be the greatest on this continent."
Erickson was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on June 14, 1924, one of two children of Oscar Erickson and Myrtle Chatterson. As a boy, he began painting; at 16, his paintings received public recognition, and he considered becoming an artist. During World War II he served in the Army University Corps, in India and Malaya. He then intended to go into the Diplomatic corps; he changed his mind when he saw an image of Frank Lloyd Wright's desert house, Taliesin West. He studied at the University of British Columbia, and the McGill University School of Architecture. While at McGill, he went to see Wright, who invited him to spend a year studying at Taliesen. But Erickson won a travelling scholarship, awarded to the best graduating student; after graduating in 1950, he spent three years in the Middle East, Scandinavia and Europe—particularly Italy. His first job was in London, as assistant to Sigmund Freud's son, the architect Ernst L. Freud. He then spent ten years teaching at the University of Oregon and the University of British Columbia (UBC), during which time he designed some of British Columbia's most important houses–Canadian Homes Magazine called his 1959 Filberg House "Canada's most fabulous house". In 1962, after a few years at various Vancouver firms, he joined with Geoffrey Massey to found Erickson/Massey Architects. In 1963, Erickson and Massey submitted the winning design for Simon Fraser University.
Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC)
Simon Fraser University sits atop Burnaby Mountain, at Greater Vancouver's eastern edge, 1,214 feet above sea level. Its scale is reminiscent of the utopian designs of 18th-century French architects but provides a balance between its context and the structural ambitions of the 1960s Modernist period. The unfinished concrete blends in with the surrounding geography in colour but not in shape. When viewed from above, the campus forms a geometric contrast to the nearby mountains but it's open to its natural surroundings and does not interfere with the site's spectacular views. While Erickson had 900 acres to work with, he kept the campus tight and left the rest for meadow and playing fields. The design features a covered plaza with massive skylights. The campus is landscaped to provide numerous small spaces for study and, in its centre, Erickson placed a large rectangular pool containing a block of Fraser River jade. Perhaps most significantly, the academic disciplines are not isolated in separate buildings; the campus is a quadrangle designed so that people have to cross paths and interact with each other. Tagged "the instant university" because it was completed in two years, the design was met with international acclaim, with one critic writing that it "answered questions about the nature of education". Everything about the project was eventful; in an interview with Veery journal, 1997 – 1999, Erickson reflected on it all: "And then I won a competition from Simon Fraser University, and that really started my career. So everything . . . you know, there’s always a peak, and then always, what can I say, an underground, fault, in that peak that would bring me down to earth. I know when Simon Fraser opened, it was really a triumphant opening because we brought the whole thing in on time, given two years to design the whole thing and build it at the same time, and it was a trial by fire, but we made it, and then we were called in to the board of governors, and my partner and I assumed to be congratulated on what we had accomplished. Instead, we had a terrible dressing down by the board, and we were just so defeated that we said, 'What should we do, jump off a cliff now or somehow persist?' And we did. And gradually, more things came to us, and that was the beginning. And it was always up and then down and then up and down.”
The MacMillan Bloedel Building (Vancouver, BC)
In 1965, Canadian forestry giant MacMillan Bloedel was in the process of designing its new head office, on Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver. The company had proposals from several firms and asked Erickson to revise them. Erickson declined but said, if they gave him a month, he’d give them a new design. Four weeks later, he presented the design for what would become one of the city’s most prominent buildings, and one of Canada's finest examples of Brutalist architecture. The MacMillan Bloedel Building, which Erickson described as "a Doric building in its starkness and simplicity", is a 27- storey cast-in-place concrete tower with offset halves, deeply recessed windows and, in agreement with the Japanese love for surfaces that express the nature of material, sharp-edged reinforced concrete as the dominant finish, inside and out. The building and its plaza were conceived as a continuous whole; the plaza is well below street level, and is contained by planters and reflecting pools. The building's walls taper in thickness from ten feet at the base to one foot at the top, and the entire structure suggests a forest; Erickson said that he was inspired by the paintings of artist Emily Carr, but added that the resemblance to a forest is incidental. The interior features innovative indirect lighting, coffered ceilings and, for the MacBlo offices, a unique built-in cupboard system that doubles as hallway partitions. The building is considered culturally significant as a breakthrough for Modernist designers and a masterful integration of structure and mechanics. In 1993, it was declared a National Heritage Building. In 2019, it achieved LEED Platinum certification. In 2021 it was renamed Arthur Erickson Place.
Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC)
The Museum of Anthropology was built in 1976, as an inclusion to the campus at the University of British Columbia. It houses artifacts and exhibits from world cultures, with an emphasis on Pacific Northwest cultures and the First Nations of British Columbia. This building blends methods of reinforced concrete and the traditional post-and-beam construction; oversized beams evoke a monumental feeling in many of Erickson's projects, calling on the size and scale of the surrounding trees. It includes Erickson's trademark use of concrete piers and large stretches of glass; by using concrete beams to represent de-materialized logs and opening up the main atrium through expanses of glass, Erickson refers to the traditional notion of post-and-beam construction while integrating these characteristics into a modernist building. The structure sits on a promontory facing the ocean and mountains. The landscape of the site was particularly important, as Erickson wanted to depict the connection between indigenous Pacific Northwest cultures to the land. He and Vancouver landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander studied the landscapes of Haida Gwaii, with its totem poles standing on mounds covered with wild grasses and surrounded by forest. A seed expert provided the correct plantings of indigenous grasses and flowers, fallen logs were left in situ, a gravel pond was created to reflect the mountains and sky, and mounds of earth were used to both muffle traffic noise and create the sense of hills rolling to the ocean. The university describes the museum as: ..."a total work of art, expressing a convergence of the site, building, collection and the performances and ceremonies that take place there."
Roy Thomson Hall (Toronto, ON)
Roy Thomson Hall was built between 1972 and 1982, and was designed by Erickson with the assistance of the Toronto firm of Mathers and Haldenby. Named after the Canadian media mogul Baron Thomson of Fleet (1894-1976), the building was devised as a permanent venue for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. It is a 30,000 square-foot irregular oval structure with an 80-foot auditorium, rising above a four-storey square with partially-exposed service areas and rehearsal halls. The structure is covered by a multi-paned glass roof with triangular and diamond patterns divided by glazing bars and supported by a steel-tube skeleton. The glass cladding provides views into the building, where concrete columns support a series of interlocking lobbies. The mirrored foyer conceals noise-cancelling double walls; the interior also featured textured concrete walls, stainless steel trim and U-shaped seating topped by a giant oculus. Erickson had 32 different models constructed, and worked with an experienced acoustician, to establish the hall's correct shape and acoustics. He used globe fixtures to control the lighting, ventilation and sound systems, and suspended and moveable plastic disks and fabric-clad cylindrical banners to adjust the acoustics. In 2000, a $20 million acoustic enhancement project replaced all of this with a moveable central acoustical canopy. The walls were brought in by as much as 20 feet, the seating was rearranged, and wooden panels were added. Erickson, who was not consulted on the project, strongly and publicly objected to the overhaul, writing that acoustics were an "intangible pseudo-science". But the refurbished hall opened to high praise and it is now one of the chief landmarks in downtown Toronto. In 2001, it received Heritage Status from the City of Toronto.