Quotes from 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.

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

Roman civilization had achieved, within the bounds of its technology, relatively as great a mastery of time and space as we have achieved today.

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

There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to its early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Life is rich, always changing, always challenging, and we architects have the task of transmitting into wood, concrete, glass and steel, of transforming human aspirations into habitable and meaningful space.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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