Arthur Erickson

After 1980, you never heard reference to space again. Surface, the most convincing evidence of the descent into materialism, became the focus of design. Space disappeared.

Inspiration in Science may have to do with ideas, but not in Art. In art it is in the senses that are instinctively responsive to the medium of expression.

Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.

With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption.

No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.

Whenever we witness art in a building, we are aware of an energy contained by it.

The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe.

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.

Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?

The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning.

Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.

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.

Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building.

Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart.

The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line.

We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward.

Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that moves us.

Part of our western outlook stems from the scientific attitude and its method of isolating the parts of a phenomenon in order to analyze them.