Quotes By Arthur Erickson

Bankers cannot afford to be concerned with only the economic aspects of projects. There may be serious implications on the natural environment, the urban environment, on human culture.

The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line.

We settled this continent without art. So it was easy for us to treat it as an imported luxury, not a necessity.

In those countries with centuries of a craft tradition behind their building methods, techniques are tightly coordinated under the direction of the architect.

Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.

We regard those other cultures, such as that of India, where many people live and believe and behave much as they did 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, as undeveloped.

The obsession with performance left no room for the development of the intuitive or spiritual impact of space and form other than the aesthetic of the machine itself.

There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a revolution of a much more profound and fundamental nature than the social and political revolutions of the last half century.

Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind.

We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist.

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.

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.

Builders eventually took advantage of the look of modernism to build cheaply and carelessly.

Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.

Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building.

Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.

There is an increasing awareness of the interrelatedness of things. We are becoming less prone to accept an immediate solution without questioning its larger implications.

The great dream merchant Disney was a success because make-believe was what everyone seemed to need in a spiritually empty land.

The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process.

You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.

The delusion of entertainment is devoid of meaning. It may amuse us for a bit, but after the initial hit we are left with the dark feeling of desolation.

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and 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 yet to have a conscience at all about the exploitation of human cultures.

With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption.

The heart, not the head, must be the guide.

The essentially unchangeable established order of things slowly disappeared and was forgotten for a while completely.

No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems.

No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly.

No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.