PHOTO ESSAY
Concrete Poet
The bold lines of architect Arthur Erickson
By Greg Buium
May 2006
 Photo by Ricardo L. Castro, 2005. Courtesy of the Vancouver Art Gallery. |
Robson Square (1973-79)
Vancouver
If Olsberg were forced to choose Erickson’s one essential masterwork it would be the three-block Robson Square complex in downtown Vancouver. The project – which includes a central plaza, the provincial law courts and the VAG itself – was meant to re-imagine the heart of the city. Park and office space blur together; grassy nooks and public spaces sink below and then rise above the street. The courts are housed in a huge concrete structure, a pyramid of sorts, with a glass roof and a massive atrium covered in greenery and bathed in light.
Olsberg mentions Erickson’s close ties to then-prime minister Trudeau and admiration for his legal reforms. “There is a sort of cultural, ideological, political moment in Canadian history which Arthur is totally in tune with [here], which basically says not just that we are not Americans, but that the world is something we look at, that we think about and we treat with respect. And that nothing is invisible, that nothing stays secret.”
The court building was intended as a kind of monument to the “transparency” of the Canadian legal system; in Erickson’s vision, a passerby outside is meant to be able to see justice at work. Once you’re inside, that effect doesn’t change. “There’s that wonderful thing you see in the law courts, of the barristers out there on the balconies conferring with their clients,” Olsberg says. “No one can hide.”
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