Arthur Erickson Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Arthur Erickson (1924-2009) was a Canadian architect from Vancouver and one of the most celebrated architects of his country. His buildings use concrete, glass and landscape to respond to the climate and light of the Pacific Northwest, from Simon Fraser University on Burnaby Mountain and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia to Robson Square in Vancouver and Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto.

Vancouver, the war and McGill

Erickson was born in Vancouver in 1924. He studied at the University of British Columbia and served in the Canadian Army in Asia during the Second World War, learning Japanese. He then studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1950, and travelled widely in the Mediterranean and Asia, experiences that shaped his sense of landscape and history.

Simon Fraser University

In 1963 Erickson and his partner Geoffrey Massey won the competition for Simon Fraser University on Burnaby Mountain. Completed in 1965, the campus is a long linear megastructure with a great covered mall, terraces and courtyards that follow the ridge, and it brought them international recognition.

The Museum of Anthropology and Robson Square

The Museum of Anthropology at UBC (1976), with its tall concrete post-and-beam hall inspired by Northwest Coast Indigenous architecture, houses monumental totem poles against the view of the mountains and sea. Robson Square in downtown Vancouver (1983), a three-block civic complex of law courts, offices and stepped gardens, made public landscape part of the city.

Toronto, Washington and recognition

Erickson’s other works include the MacMillan Bloedel Building in Vancouver (1969), Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto (1982), the Canadian Chancery in Washington (1989) and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma (2002). He received the AIA Gold Medal in 1986 and died in Vancouver in 2009.