Quotes By Arthur Erickson

The Achilles Heel of the Americas was the lack of cultural confidence typical of new settlers.

Only when inspired to go beyond consciousness by some extraordinary insight does beauty manifest unexpectedly.

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

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

We are guilty for sending teams into foreign countries to advise them how to be like us.

Nowhere has specialization penetrated so deeply into the building professions as North America.

Tahiti has been spoiled for many years, but Bali is one of the few cultures with origins in one of the great ancient cultures which is still alive.

The tourist transports his own values and demands to his destinations and implants them like an infectious disease, decimating whatever values existed before.

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.

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

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.

We settled this continent without art. So it was easy for us to treat it as an imported luxury, not a necessity.

God's designs may be frequent justification for our actions, but it is we, the self-made men, who take the credit.

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.

The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events.

Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.

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.

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.

In those countries with centuries of a craft tradition behind their building methods, techniques are tightly coordinated under the direction of the architect.

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.

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.

Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.

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.

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.

Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind.

The great dream merchant Disney was a success because make-believe was what everyone seemed to need in a spiritually empty land.

You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.

We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist.

Builders eventually took advantage of the look of modernism to build cheaply and carelessly.

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.