PHOTO ESSAY

Concrete Poet

The bold lines of architect Arthur Erickson

By Greg Buium

May 2006

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Photo by Ricardo L. Castro, 2005. Courtesy of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Simon Fraser University (1963)
Burnaby, B.C.

Erickson’s first major commission, completed before he turned 40, was to create the master plan for Simon Fraser University, a compact campus on the top of Burnaby Mountain just east of Vancouver.

“There’s not one scrap of imitation anywhere in the work,” Olsberg says. “At no point does he follow someone else. He draws from Le Corbusier, he draws from [Frank Lloyd] Wright, but he’s not in a school, he’s not trying to follow something, and increasingly, I think, as the years go by, he doesn’t even care to look at what his colleagues and peers are doing.”

Reflections of Erickson’s extensive early travels show up immediately in SFU’s design. There’s a fascination with the forms of Egypt and Japan and the Native traditions of the Americas. There’s also Erickson’s obsession with concrete, the central material in every one of the Critical Works projects, and sleek, repetitive lines. The severity of SFU’s architecture continues to inspire controversy amongst students and critics.

“It surprises me how many architecturally well-versed people are made uneasy by that one,” Olsberg says. “I think they find that it’s a little too fierce.”