A Centenary Lecture by Architecture Critic Trevor Boddy FRAIC
A feature lecture on the ideas and designs of Canada’s most globally prominent and influential architect, in celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. With works like Lethbridge and Simon Fraser Universities, Robson Square, UBC Museum of Anthropology, Roy Thomson Hall Toronto, plus Cambridge's Hillborn House and dozens of other sublime residences, Arthur Erickson has no rival as our most lauded architect of the 20th century, being the first Canadian to receive the AIA Gold Medal.
Vancouver architecture critic + curator Trevor Boddy FRAIC analyses these works and others for their generative ideas: a Japanese-inflected integration of garden and house design; a reliance on cadence and compression as devices for choreographing spaces; a critical advocacy for dense and diverse cities; the recurring motif of the ‘flying beam;’ and most of all, the notion of a new architecture approaching the condition of “the constructed landscape.” Boddy concludes with speculations on Erickson’s enduring influence on Vancouver urbanism and the work of such contemporary practices as the Patkaus, Douglas Cardinal, Shim + Sutcliffe and others.
This lecture is sponsored by Grand Valley Society of Architects and Waterloo School of Architecture.