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What is the thread of western civilization that distinguished its course in history? It has to do with the preoccupation of western man with his outward command and his sense of superiority.

Arthur Erickson
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We settled this continent without art. So it was easy for us to treat it as an imported luxury, not a necessity.
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Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.
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Nowhere has specialization penetrated so deeply into the building professions as North America.
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Bankers cannot afford to be concerned with only the economic aspects of projects. There may be serious implications on the natural environment, the urban environment, on human culture.
Arthur Erickson
You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.
Arthur Erickson
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.
Arthur Erickson
The Achilles Heel of the Americas was the lack of cultural confidence typical of new settlers.
Arthur Erickson
With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption.
Arthur Erickson
We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward.
Arthur Erickson
Western history has been a history of deed done, actions performed and results achieved.
Arthur Erickson
The delusion of entertainment is devoid of meaning. It may amuse us for a bit, but after the initial hit we are left with the dark feeling of desolation.
Arthur Erickson
God's designs may be frequent justification for our actions, but it is we, the self-made men, who take the credit.
Arthur Erickson
This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see... the inveterate materialism which has become the model for cultures around the world.
Arthur Erickson
No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly.
Arthur Erickson
No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.
Arthur Erickson
Whenever we witness art in a building, we are aware of an energy contained by it.
Arthur Erickson
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.
Arthur Erickson
The essentially unchangeable established order of things slowly disappeared and was forgotten for a while completely.
Arthur Erickson
Roman civilization had achieved, within the bounds of its technology, relatively as great a mastery of time and space as we have achieved today.
Arthur Erickson
The obsession with performance left no room for the development of the intuitive or spiritual impact of space and form other than the aesthetic of the machine itself.
Arthur Erickson
We regard those other cultures, such as that of India, where many people live and believe and behave much as they did 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, as undeveloped.
Arthur Erickson
Ancient Rome was as confident of the immutability of its world and the continual expansion and improvement of the human lot as we are today.
Arthur Erickson
Builders eventually took advantage of the look of modernism to build cheaply and carelessly.
Arthur Erickson
Our engineering departments build freeways which destroy a city or a landscape, in the process.
Arthur Erickson
The heart, not the head, must be the guide.
Arthur Erickson
There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to its early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization.
Arthur Erickson
We are guilty for sending teams into foreign countries to advise them how to be like us.
Arthur Erickson
There is an increasing awareness of the interrelatedness of things. We are becoming less prone to accept an immediate solution without questioning its larger implications.
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.
Arthur Erickson
Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.
Arthur Erickson
There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a revolution of a much more profound and fundamental nature than the social and political revolutions of the last half century.
Arthur Erickson
Our universities advocate fragmentation in their course systems.
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The details are the very source of expression in architecture. But we are caught in a vice between art and the bottom line.
Arthur Erickson
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
Great buildings that move the spirit have always been rare. In every case they are unique, poetic, products of the heart.
Arthur Erickson
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.
Arthur Erickson
The great dream merchant Disney was a success because make-believe was what everyone seemed to need in a spiritually empty land.
Arthur Erickson
I plead for conservation of human culture, which is much more fragile than nature herself. We needn't destroy other cultures with the force of our own.
Arthur Erickson
Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
Arthur Erickson
The innovative spirit was America's strongest attribute, transforming everything into a brave new world, but there lingered an insecurity about the arts.
Arthur Erickson
What is the thread of western civilization that distinguished its course in history? It has to do with the preoccupation of western man with his outward command and his sense of superiority.
Arthur Erickson
We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist.
Arthur Erickson
Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind.
Arthur Erickson