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Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression.

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
Mantras
Contemporary
Profit
Bottom
Line
Source
Eliminates
Expression
Architectural
Lines
Mantra

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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.
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Today's developer is a poor substitute for the committed entrepreneur of the last century for whom the work of architecture represented a chance to celebrate the worth of his enterprise.
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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.
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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.
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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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Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.
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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.
Arthur Erickson
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Our universities advocate fragmentation in their course systems.
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Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
Arthur Erickson
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We can appreciate but not really understand the medieval town. We cannot comprehend its compactness, the contiguity of all its buildings as a single uninterrupted whole.
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.
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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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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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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...
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No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly.
Arthur Erickson
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God's designs may be frequent justification for our actions, but it is we, the self-made men, who take the credit.
Arthur Erickson
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No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.
Arthur Erickson
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Western history has been a history of deed done, actions performed and results achieved.
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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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