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Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart.

Arthur Erickson

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Arthur Erickson
Age: 84 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 14
Died: 2009
Died: May 20
Architect
University Teacher
Vancouver
British Columbia
Arthur Charles Erickson
Arthur C. Erickson
Heart
Unique
Every
Products
Always
Move
Badass
Cases
Buildings
Building
Poetic
Moving
Rare
Spirit
Architecture
Great
Case

More quotes by Arthur Erickson

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With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption.
Arthur Erickson
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You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.
Arthur Erickson
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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.
Arthur Erickson
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Life is rich, always changing, always challenging, and we architects have the task of transmitting into wood, concrete, glass and steel, of transforming human aspirations into habitable and meaningful space.
Arthur Erickson
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We have today a fairly thorough knowledge of the early Greco-Roman period because our motivations are the same.
Arthur Erickson
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I plead for conservation of human culture, which is much more fragile than nature herself. We needn't destroy other cultures with the force of our own.
Arthur Erickson
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Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.
Arthur Erickson
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Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.
Arthur Erickson
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We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist.
Arthur Erickson
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Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place in all this? Unfortunately we are no longer the interpreters of our culture's myths but the followers of that dubious client, the developer, who has little patience with the art of architecture, the fine detail and obscure promise, which can upset his financial activity.
Arthur Erickson
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We are not peddlers of the fashionable. We believe that good design defies fashion, is truly innovative, eminently sensible, yet a source of inspiration to those who have the pleasure of living with it.
Arthur Erickson
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No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly.
Arthur Erickson
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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.
Arthur Erickson
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Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
Arthur Erickson
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We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward.
Arthur Erickson
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Whenever we witness art in a building, we are aware of an energy contained by it.
Arthur Erickson
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There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to it's early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization...
Arthur Erickson
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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.
Arthur Erickson
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Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression.
Arthur Erickson
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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.
Arthur Erickson