Arthur Erickson often referred to the workplace as an ‘atelier’, and many of the distinguished architects who worked with him over the years remember it that way: an open space without hierarchy, filled with large models of projects underway, where design was the common language between architects from all over the world and collaboration was both enabled and encouraged in a studio culture that made it a “joy to go to work each day.”
- AE100 press release from the Arthur Erickson Foundation
This past week in Vancouver saw the completion of a year long centenary celebration of Arthur Erickson, put on by the Arthur Erickson Foundation in collaboration with the UBC School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture. With over a hundred members from the Vancouver architectural community gathered at Robson Square for a full day of lectures and round table discussions, the event was topped off with a keynote by RAIC Gold Medal winner Brigitte Shim.
Called AE100, the proceedings started just over a year ago on what would’ve been his 100th birthday, kicking off a year of exhibitions and lectures, accompanied by the renaming of the former MacMillan Bloedel tower to Arthur Erickson Place and the November premiere of the new film Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines. The year of festivities that saw opera singing and Van-Okinawa Taiko drummers at Robson Square, LEGO recreations of his buildings, the show stopper was most certainly the reopening of the Museum of Anthropology after an 18-month long closure for seismic upgrades.
With a lecture, two round table discussions, a walking tour, and a keynote about his legacy—all free of charge—the day-long event proved to be the fitting bookend. Starting the proceedings with a bang, Eva Matsuzaki and Barry Johns regaled the crowd with stories of working alongside Arthur during the design of Robson Square and the Law Courts in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
Accompanied by black and white photos of the office as it looked then, Eva spoke about the collaborative spirit of the office, and was astonished at how much trust Arthur had put in their young cohort, all barely in their 30s. She also noted the office was about building models to solve problems more than a drawing, using push pins and foam core more than trace paper and sketches.
With an inspiring image of Canadian geese flying in a V formation to characterize the teamwork spirit of the office, Eva noted how much she had enjoyed working for Arthur, even if his time spent in the office was at a premium given his travels to his other offices. She and the others would often come into the office in the morning to find his notes all over the model with suggestions for improvements, and from time to time, as Barry noted, they would have to corner him into making a design decision. He humourously shared how he got him to pick the shade of white paint for the Law Court interiors.
Barry also described some Eureka moments that occurred during the construction document phase of the Law Courts, recounting his experience of working with a glazier to concoct a quadruple-glazed skylight to go in the water features feeding the Law Court’s waterfalls.
After their talk, Eva and Barry treated those gathered for a stroll through Robson Square, traveling from the ice rink at the lowest level, up the ‘stramps‘ to the waterfalls (sadly bereft of water), to the north entry of the Law Courts, closed for the weekend. Several were also horrified at the new elastomeric traffic membrane that had recently been installed on the Smithe Street pedestrian overpass, haphazardly covering over top of the work that went into getting the concrete and granite mix correct for the precast pavers.
After the first discussion and walking tour there was a noticeable shift in narrative, with the emphasis passed from those who knew and worked with Arthur to those who have studied him, including the day’s next speaker, Rhode Island School of Design associate professor Michael Kubo. Admitting in his opening remarks that it was his first time visiting Vancouver, he was perhaps a little shell-shocked after having visited both the Burnaby SFU campus and UBC Museum of Anthropology just the day before.
With a talk entitled “The Authorship of Canadian Architecture: Arthur Erickson’s Global Modernism”, Michael’s lecture was flawless in execution as an academic (with several UBC architecture students in the crowd), though as was later pointed out in the Q&A, his talk was a little guarded when it came to providing an actual critique of Arthur’s buildings.
With a quick discussion of Arthur’s early career, including how he almost went to Taliesin West to do an apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright, his talk focused mainly on the moment Arthur became more than the sum of his parts—riding the success of SFU, Robson Square, and the UBC Museum of Anthropology to catapult himself to starchitect status.
Having become friends with the likes of Prime Minister Trudeau, he had well secured his place in the international spotlight by this time, with no less than four Expo pavilions, including the two fantastic ones he did for Montreal in 1967 and Osaka in 1970.
But without a doubt, Michael’s main contribution to the day was illuminating the work Arthur did in the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait, including the oft misunderstood Al Sawaber project he did in Kuwait City in 1976. As Michael explained, Arthur and the developer had imagined a place for the Kuwaiti upper class to live, but by the time it was built, its original intentions had been compromised to the point that Arthur had his name removed from what eventually got built.
Now demolished, it could be called Kuwait’s Pruitt Igoe moment, given that the intended occupants never moved in and the buildings had deteriorated badly over the years.
With the next roundtable entitled “Living Labs: Three Experimental Houses by Arthur Erickson”, a journalist, architect, and historian gave their perspective of Arthur through three of his houses – with Adele Weder speaking to the Filberg House, Clinton Cuddington for the Smith II House, and Michael Propokow on the Hilborn house.
Providing their own personal experience of how Arthur’s work has affected their own careers, from the circumstances around each house’s clients to the context and site they were situated in, there were also some great gasp-out-loud moments when the crowd learned from Adele that the Filberg house is currently available for rent on AirBnB. Michael also noted that the Hilborn house was recently for sale by Sotheby’s (now sold for a cool $3.9 million).
Following their presentations, Leslie van Duser chaired a discussion around how Arthur’s work can continue to be the subject of scholarly research (I discovered later Nick Milkovich had originally been intended to chair, but sadly is currently recovering from a stroke).
Building upon Leslie’s question on how best to preserve Arthur’s legacy, Adele added a damning indictment of the Canada Council for the Art‘s recent ‘annihilation’ of the architecture office, much to the astonishment of those in the room. We can perhaps sleep a bit better knowing Phyllis Lambert is a member of the AEF, who along with the Board will ensure his work continues to have a prominent place at both McGill University—where he studied and received his architecture degree—along with the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.
Finishing the day recounting her time working at Arthur’s office in the mid-1970’s, Brigitte Shim spoke of how Arthur had impressed upon her the importance of site, a grounding she took with her as she started her decades long tenure teaching architecture at the University of Toronto, as well as in the forming of her partnership with Howard Sutcliffe in their award winning firm of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects.
Overall, Arthur would’ve appreciated the attention to the details revealed throughout the day and as one of the crowd noted during the Q&A, it is time for him to take his place in the Modernist canon alongside Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, and Oscar Niemeyer.
Now in the second century since his birth, those gathered at Robson Square this past week who were there in his office with him—those sitting up front as well as many in the audience—will continue to do their part to pass on his lessons and his stories, so that the next generation of architects can continue to learn the lesson of his Seven Stones, just as much as they can be inspired by his built achievements.
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Sean Ruthen is a Metro Vancouver-based architect.
