Inside Vancouver
King Arthur - continued
By Michael Harris published Sep 1, 2006
Like his best buildings, Arthur Erickson was an elusive blend of style and substance, past and present, inner and outer. He died, at 84, in the spring of 2009. This profile originally ran in September, 2006.
Olsberg calls the Inside/Outside take on Erickson “glib and off-hand. It’s also a bit wrong. It implies that you’re not interfering or intervening. He’s revealing nature; he plays a very strong and aggressive position toward it.”
Phyllis Lambert, who holds Olsberg’s old post at the CCA, doesn’t like his choice of words. “I’ve seen a lot of buildings that are aggressive with the landscape,” she laughs, “and they just obliterate the landscape.” But Olsberg is firm: “A really great architect,” he says, “is not looking at slipping a building into the landscape. A great architect explains the landscape.”
The Smiths’ lives are affected in every way by this house. Marion (who tells me her grandmother was the first white woman born in British Columbia) worked as a weaver here for years and Gordon, at 90, still works in his onsite studio for six hours every day. Their lives seem to flow effortlessly into their environment and, from there, into their work, their intellectual expressions.
If Erickson’s buildings can solder life and work (just as they solder nature and artifice), can his own life be easily divided from his career? Phyllis Lambert pauses before answering, carefully. “I believe not.” Gordon Smith qualifies that, sitting down at his well-loved breakfast table. “He’s a man first.” Marion leans in, conspiratorially: “He’s a real prince,” she says. “But I always thought he had a mystery behind him.”
Erickson the Man
Those who know him always refer to the idea of grace. “It’s not a word we use much these days,” says Olsberg. “I think he lives in a Buddhist, a Zen-like state. There is a mystic quality.” Phyllis Lambert falls over herself explaining: “Arthur is one of the most—I wouldn’t want to say elegant—but he’s a gentleman. Not courtly…there’s simply no pretense. Other architects I could name have a great deal of that.” “When he walks into a room,” says Gordon Smith, “everyone stops.”
Landscape designer Cornelia Oberlander, a dear friend of Erickson’s who has worked with him since Robson Square (1973) and also landscaped the Museum of Anthropology and Simon Fraser University, says that although he still gets excited about new work, “he is tired, I think.” In our interviews, Erickson is rhythmical and slow with his responses, even as his eyes flash (likewise, the liverspotted hands always bear a lustrous black ring). “But, you know,” says Oberlander, her own voice crackling with age, “we will never give up.”
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Discussed
Prior to this profile in Vancouver Magazine, Arthur Erickson had never
publicly acknowledged his late companion, Francisco Kripacz. When asked why
not, he would explain that he feared his clients' reactions to news of his
sexual orientation. That Erickson ultimately overcame this fear is a
tribute not only to him but to his late spouse, who, as Erickson fondly put
it in 2006, "wasn't lured aside by convention." Apparently - hearteningly -
neither was Erickson towards the end of his life.
