Layered Landscapes is an exhibition at the Nickle Galleries in Calgary that examines eight projects by Arthur Erickson (1924-2009), selected from the collections of the Canadian Architectural Archives at the University of Calgary. Perhaps Canada’s greatest 20th-century architect, Erickson designed many iconic buildings in Canada. The selected projects include some of his early residential projects, such as the Filberg House and the first Smith Residence, and also larger institutional projects that cemented his national reputation, such as Simon Fraser University. The exhibition focuses on sketches as artifacts of the design process, as a kind of intermediate architecture that reveals inspiration and potential.
Contemporary architects and artists have added a crucial and critical interpretive layer to the exhibition. The Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative (MBAC) has designed a group of eight vitrines for the display of the drawings, allowing the use of light and overlap to reveal both the crafting of the architectural drawings and ideas in a parallel process, while the incorporated videos commissioned by videographer and photographer Brian Shier explore the tactile experience of selected spaces.
Layered Landscapes is organized for Nickle Galleries by the Canadian Architectural Archives, curated by Linda Fraser and Geoffrey Simmins, and designed by the Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative with photography by Brian Shier. Funding assistance has been provided by the Assistance for the Promotion of Architecture and the Assistance to Practitioners, Critics and Curators of Architecture programs of the Canada Council for the Arts, MBAC, On Site magazine, Read Jones Christoffersen and Dialog. Nickle Galleries also acknowledges support from the Post Secondary Institutions program of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
The exhibition runs from October 18, 2013 to January 3, 2014, and the opening reception takes place from 5:00pm to 8:00pm on Friday, October 25, 2013, and a panel discussion follows on Thursday, November 21, 2013 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm. Admission is free and open to the public. Nearby paid parking is available at the Arts Parkade, accessible on the south side of the main campus.
Nickle Galleries is located at 410 University Court NW in Calgary.
For more information, please visit http://library.ucalgary.ca/nickle/