Text Helena Grdadolnik
Photos Ricardo Castro
During a tour of Arthur Erickson: Critical Works at the Vancouver Art Gallery, guest curator Nicholas Olsberg, former director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, stressed that this career retrospective "is not about Arthur Erickson as a Canadian icon or a Vancouverite--it is about his architecture."
Only the Perspectives room examines Arthur Erickson as a personality, but Olsberg had no hand in its curation. The room has many of Erickson's personal effects including a film he made of his Japanese travels, a letter from Trudeau, a ticket stub from Ronchamp, and a silhouette of himself. Having just toured the exhibit with Erickson, what struck me immediately is that the image is larger than life. Despite being a small man physically, architecturally Arthur Erickson is a giant. Perhaps this hints at the exhibition's true purpose: it isn't to recreate "the visceral experience generated when entering one of Erickson's buildings" as the press release states, since half the architecture on display is located locally--this exhibit is conceived instead to situate Erickson's architecture amongst Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn in the Modernist pantheon of architectural genius. I question the need to canonize the work to prove its importance, but Olsberg's rationale for revisiting the 12 architectural projects is enough for me: "Erickson's work anticipated the growth of the city; for this reason, it is important to re-examine his buildings today."
Erickson's architecture shaped Vancouver in the 1960s and '70s. Today it is planners and developers, not architects, who have a greater influence over the city's form, much to its detriment. This is not because architects in British Columbia lack the talent of previous generations (which is what I worry the public will take from this exhibit), but because they are not given the same opportunities to shape the city as they were in decades past. Back in 1966, the City of Vancouver commissioned Erickson Massey Architects to study Vancouver's downtown peninsula in an effort to bring architectural integrity to the growing city. Architecture was considered important then; it isn't any more. Procurement for major public projects in Vancouver--even the Olympics--is determined these days by RFPs that consider the financial bottom line before architecture.
Governmental patronage of innovative architectural ideas is lacking in Vancouver, but this was not the case in the 1970s. Erickson's original iteration of the Three Block Plan (Robson Square and the Law Courts) was a tower and plaza. A change in the provincial government in 1972 from Social Credit to NDP gave Erickson a chance to reconsider his proposal for the site. He turned the form on its side to make a spine-like building that simultaneously created a new model for a courthouse and a city centre.
Robson Square is not the only project in this retrospective that broaches matters concerning the current state of architecture in Vancouver and BC, and the same can be said of most of the buildings on display. It is a lost opportunity that these connections were not mined for the public presentation of Erickson's architecture. The Canadian Chancery completed in Washington, DC in 1983 easily relates to current problems with respect to competitions and government procurement. Erickson did not enter the design competition for the building, let alone win. Nevertheless, the project was awarded to him by Pierre Trudeau. This was not the first time that Trudeau took an architect in through the back door for a large architectural commission; as a result, there was a climate of uncertainty in Canadian architecture regarding procurement methods and design competitions. The current Canadian Rules for the Conduct of Architectural Competitions' militant wording and defensive nature are the result. It is only over the last year that the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) has put together a task force to reassess this document and, hopefully, cast architectural competitions in a more positive light.
As the City of Vancouver searches for new models of medium density outside of the downtown core to meet Mayor Sam Sullivan's EcoDensity initiative, a look at the form of Erickson's Waterfall Building may prove fruitful. Lance Berelowitz, addressing the World Planners Congress said, "We should explore alternative forms of housing than just the traditional detached single-family house or the high-rise condominium tower. We need to explore those other forms of housing that Europe has mastered over the centuries, such as the central courtyard block housing of Barcelona, Paris or Berlin." Built in 2002, the courtyard form of the Waterfall Building was conceived by Erickson as a "city within a city." It stands today in marked contrast to the repeated condominium towers--seen from its rooftop patios--whose architectural forms have thwarted the creation of communities.
"Erickson expected MacMillan Bloedel to be surrounded one day by banal glass towers," according to Olsberg. Completed in 1965, the office tower "speaks of shadow, solidity, substance and strength. In contrast to the insubstantial-seeming city of glass that now surrounds [it]." In the exhibition there is no mention of the Evergreen Building, another Erickson-designed office tower that is currently in danger of being destroyed in the wake of the city's condo craze, surely to be replaced by one more "banal glass tower."
One model in the exhibit sits apart from the others. The 13th project in this exhibit, a luxury condominium tower scheduled for completion in 2008, "The Erickson" was designed for Concord Pacific (also the exhibition sponsors) by Erickson, Nick Milkovich and Ledingham Design. With this project Arthur Erickson becomes more than just an architect; he is a brand name. An architect exploiting himself as a marketable brand--whether it be Frank Gehry and his line of jewelry for Tiffany or Norman Foster and his new line of toilets (unveiled recently at Vancouver's Jameson House)--gives the public the perception that a single individual genius is at work behind all of his projects, when the truth is that the work is being produced in large offices full of many talented individuals. If you believe in the myth of the genius, perhaps one of these individuals has what it takes to become the next Arthur Erickson. But will today's Vancouver give a young Erickson the same chance?
Arthur Erickson: Critical Works continues at the Vancouver Art Gallery until September 10, 2006. Douglas & McIntyre has released a companion publication by the same name.
Helena Grdadolnik will begin doctoral studies at the London School of Economic's Cities Programme this fall. See www.TheTyee.ca for her series on Vancouver architecture funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.