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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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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
Single
Uninterrupted
Understand
Medieval
Cannot
Comprehend
Whole
Buildings
Really
Town
Towns
Appreciate
Building

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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.
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The innovative spirit was America's strongest attribute, transforming everything into a brave new world, but there lingered an insecurity about the arts.
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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.
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Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
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Our settlement of land is without regard to the best use of land.
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You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.
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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.
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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.
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Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression.
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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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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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No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.
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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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Nearly all of the advances in structural and aesthetic innovation is coming from abroad.
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Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.
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Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.
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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.
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The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning.
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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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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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