Arthur Erickson (1924–2009) was a Canadian architect and urban planner from Vancouver, seen as one of the most influential architects in Canada and the only Canadian to win the AIA Gold Medal. In 1962 he founded Erickson/Massey Architects with Geoffrey Massey, and his buildings often drew on the post-and-beam building of the Pacific Coast First Nations, Asian temples and the log cabin.
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Simon Fraser University (1965), the campus he and Massey won in a 1963 competition, sits on top of Burnaby Mountain in raw concrete that matches the land in colour but not in shape. The MacMillan Bloedel Building in Vancouver (1968), which he called "a Doric building in its starkness", is a 27-storey concrete tower of two offset halves with deeply recessed windows. The Museum of Anthropology at UBC (1976) joins reinforced concrete to post-and-beam construction, with huge beams, concrete piers and long walls of glass. Robson Square in Vancouver (1983), a three-block civic centre of plazas, waterfalls and ramped stairs, was designed with the landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander. Arthur Erickson's buildings are studied for concrete, landscape and their response to the Pacific coast.
Simon Fraser University1965 · Burnaby
University Hall, University of Lethbridge1971 · Lethbridge
Roy Thomson Hall1982 · Toronto
MacMillan Bloedel Building1968 · Vancouver
Museum of Anthropology at UBC1976 · Vancouver
Robson Square1983 · Vancouver