Arthur Erickson Quotes

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... view

By: 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... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: 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... view

By: Arthur Erickson

Our engineering departments build freeways which destroy a city or a landscape, in the process... view

By: Arthur Erickson

Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: 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... view

By: Arthur Erickson

Our universities advocate fragmentation in their course systems... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: 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... view

By: 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... view

By: 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... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: Arthur Erickson

The essentially unchangeable established order of things slowly disappeared and was forgotten for a while completely... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: Arthur Erickson

Our settlement of land is without regard to the best use of land... view

By: Arthur Erickson

No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems... view

By: Arthur Erickson

Profit and bottom line, the contemporary mantra, eliminates the very source of architectural expression... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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... view

By: Arthur Erickson

The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: Arthur Erickson

No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly... view

By: Arthur Erickson

Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?.. view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: Arthur Erickson

It is the mystery of the creative act that something other than our conscious self takes over... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: Arthur Erickson

Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: Arthur Erickson

Nearly all of the advances in structural and aesthetic innovation is coming from abroad... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: 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... view

By: 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... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: 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... view

By: 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... view

By: Arthur Erickson

We are yet to have a conscience at all about the exploitation of human cultures... view

By: Arthur Erickson

Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture... view

By: 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... view

By: Arthur Erickson

We have today a fairly thorough knowledge of the early Greco-Roman period because our motivations are the same... view

By: Arthur Erickson

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

By: Arthur Erickson