I Have the Honour to Present Arthur Charles

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Madame Chancellor: I have the honour to present Arthur Charles Erickson, a native of Vancouver, graduate of McGill University' and a person with an outstanding career in the practice of architecture in Canada. Dr. Erickson's professional career has extended over a period of 25 years and has brought him many distinctions, awards and prizes for the consistently high quality of his work. Outstanding, even within the long list of his many fine buildings are Simon Fraser University, Lethbridge University, the Canadian Government Pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Apart from these large public commissions, he is also renowned for his designs of many beautiful private houses. Arthur Erickson has been the winner of the Massey Medal for Architecture on no less than four occasions between 1955 and 1976. In 1964 the Canadian Housing Design Council awarded him its National Design Award and again, in 1967, the same Council awarded him the Centennial Design Award. In 1970 he was awarded the Gold Medal and cash grant of $50;000 by the Royal Bank of Canada as "a Canadian citizen, whose outstanding achievement is of such importance that it is contributing to human welfare and the common good." In the world of education Dr. Erickson was, in his early years, an instructor and professor at the Universities of Oregon and British Columbia and pursued architectural study and research in many countries abroad. More recently, he was a founder of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. In spite of his extremely busy life and practice, Dr. Erickson has always found time for public service on such Boards as the Community Arts Council, Vancouver Art Gallery, the Science Council of Canada and the Vancouver Centennial Committee. As an indication of his international stature, Dr. Erickson received in 1970 the award of the Architectural Institute of Japan for his work at Expo '70 and has, this year, been elected an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Dr. Erickson is also a member of the College of Fellows of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and an academician of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He has been honored by the award of doctorates by McGill University, Simon Fraser University and Nova Scotia Technical College. Time and space prohibit my listing the many other citations and awards bestowed on Dr. Erickson in recognition of his contribution to architecture in Canada and the world. Madame Chancellor, it is a pleasure for me to ask, on behalf of the Senate, that you confer upon Arthur Charles Erickson, the degree of Doctorate of Laws, honoris causa. D. R. Campbell President May 26,1978 .

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Arthur Erickson's Concrete Trevor Boddy
I first heard Arthur Erickson speak of the importance of The Constructed Landscape: concrete to his designs in the late 1970s. As the student charged with organizing lectures at my architecture school in Arthur Erickson’s Concrete Calgary, a first talk there by Canada’s most prominent modern architect was my top priority. I called his office, but Erickson’s personal secretary informed me he no longer gave lectures to universities, only to “bankers and chambers of commerce.” I persisted, and arranged to have the Vancouver- based designer speak to a luncheon gathering of downtown businessmen. One of Erickson’s phrases in his talk that day cycled around my student brain long after he got on the airplane back to Vancouver, and the Calgary businessmen got back to pumping oil. While I did not recognize it as being so at the time, he voiced a widely-quoted shibboleth as an aside: “Concrete is the marble of the 20th century.” The use of concrete Trevor Boddy validated through comparison with a now-expensive traditional material? The reference seemed archaic to me, in part because my architectural history studies had just taught me that the ancient shores of the Mediterranean were the last home to marble used as both structure and finish for public buildings. Or was Erickson inferring something more complex with this, as in late Roman and post-Renaissance uses of marble—a veneer finish, while bricks or cheaper stones did the structural work behind, a composite in the same way steel reinforcing rods make large span and thin shell concrete structures possible? Arthur Erickson’s concrete buildings demonstrate both of these tendencies—an extension of building logic of the material itself, and a classicizing sensibility, especially in their spatial logic and recurring use of the trabeated frame.
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Document generated on 09/30/2021 3:39 p.m. Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada Le Journal de la Société pour l'étude de l'architecture au Canada Domestic Boundaries – Arthur Erickson at Home Christina Gray Volume 43, Number 2, 2018 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1058035ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1058035ar See table of contents Publisher(s) SSAC-SEAC ISSN 2563-8696 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Gray, C. (2018). Domestic Boundaries – Arthur Erickson at Home. Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada / Le Journal de la Société pour l'étude de l'architecture au Canada, 43(2), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.7202/1058035ar Copyright © SSAC-SEAC, 2019 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ ESSAY | ESSAIS 2018 DOMESTIC BOUNDARIES – ARTHUR ERICKSON AT HOME CHRISTINA GRAY is a Ph.D. candidate at > CHRISTINA GRAY the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the development of retail architecture in the late twentieth century. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Architecture n an installment of her New York from the University of Toronto.
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