Geburtsdatum | Samstag, 14. Juni 1924 |
Geburtsort | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
Todesort | Vancouver |
Sternzeichen | |
Beschreibung | Arthur Charles Erickson CC FAIA FRAIC Hon FRIBA (14. Juni 1924 - 20. Mai 2009) war ein kanadischer Architekt und Stadtplaner. Er studierte Ingenieurwesen an der University of British Columbia und erhielt 1950 seinen B.Arch. (Honours) von der McGill University. Er gilt als Kanadas einflussreichster Architekt und war der einzige kanadische Architekt, der mit der AIA-Goldmedaille des American Institute of Architects ausgezeichnet wurde (1986 für die Botschaft von Kanada in Washington, D.C.). Als Philip Johnson von Ericksons Auszeichnung erfuhr, sagte er: "Arthur Erickson ist bei weitem der größte Architekt Kanadas, und er ist vielleicht der größte auf diesem Kontinent". |
Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building.
Only when inspired to go beyond consciousness by some extraordinary insight does beauty manifest unexpectedly.
We have today a fairly thorough knowledge of the early Greco-Roman period because our motivations are the same.
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.
Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that moves us.
With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption.
Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.
Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?
Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart.
Western history has been a history of deed done, actions performed and results achieved.
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.
The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line.
You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.
The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe.
No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.
The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning.
Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.
Today's developer is a poor substitute for the committed entrepreneur of the last century for whom the work of architecture represented a chance to celebrate the worth of his enterprise.
Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.
There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to its early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization.
We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward.
This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see... the inveterate materialism which has become the model for cultures around the world.
What is the thread of western civilization that distinguished its course in history? It has to do with the preoccupation of western man with his outward command and his sense of superiority.
