Arthur Erickson, An Architect’s Life.

During the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, a larger than life figure in Canada and the United States was architect Arthur Erickson.  I have written a book review of David Stouk’s recent biography titled, Arthur Erickson, An Architect’s Life.  It was the most important book that I read in 2014.

David Stouck is professor emeritus of English at Simon Fraser University.

I wrote the book review because I found the biography to be an honest and sensitively written account of a triumphant and tragic figure of our time who was not fully understood in Canada.

The book was a finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize this past March 2014.  In addition, the biography has picked up four more award nominations.  They include 2 BC Book Prizes, plus the Melva Dwyer Award for best book on Canadian Art and Architecture, and a prize given by the UBC Library identified as the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Book on BC.

Book Review.
Arthur Erickson, An Architect’s Life, David Stouck, Author, Douglas and McIntyre, 396 pages, $34.95.

Even though he was a native son, we never really got him.  In many ways he was so un-Canadian.

With vision, arrogance and an unapologetically jet-set lifestyle, Arthur Erickson was the most well-known, successful and then unsuccessful Canadian architect of his time.  His life was a juxtaposition of extremes.  On the one hand he revelled in a public image of master builder of glorious projects, public adoration, glamour and fast cars.  On the other hand, he suffered from the same human weaknesses, failings and questionable decision making skills that we all share.

David Stouck’s book, Arthur Erickson, An Architect’s Life, helps shed light on the ambition, determination and the creative process behind one of the country’s most colourful cultural figures.  But without judgement or sensation, Stouck also reveals the behind the scenes idiosyncrasies that led to his public misunderstanding and his financial downfall.  Simply and sensitively written, the biography is not just an account of an architect’s life.  It is an honest story about a brilliant visionary who shaped the landscape around us and affected our perception of the country.  Triumphant, bizarre and in full colour, Erickson’s life could not be invented by a fiction writer, even if he were on LSD.

Even though he was born into a supportive and determined family in Vancouver, the drive and immense talent to create so many powerful and iconic buildings was not predictable.  The book starts slowly, outlining his early childhood when Arthur, as a shy boy, did not seem to fit in with other children.  However, his mother recognized something special about her son and sent him for painting lessons with Jack Shadbolt and B.C. Binning.  As a young man, his architectural eye was shaped by travels to Europe, Japan and his participation in WW2 as an interpreter in Asia.  While he was vastly popular with young women for his dancing abilities, the book reveals that he was secretly worried about his attraction to other men.  Later, he admitted that like many gay men in the 1960’s and 70’s, he could not express his sexual orientation because “it would be bad for business.”

An amusing sequence in the book describes his early architectural apprenticeship years and his inability to maintain a job with established architecture firms in Vancouver who considered him a dreamer, affected and not financially responsible.  During my own years as an architecture student in the 1980’s, my professors frequently made disparaging remarks about Erickson’s work as being too cold, too much concrete and too expensive.  Yet, during the 1970’s and 80’s, nobody else was winning as many commissions and architectural competitions in Canada as Arthur Erickson.

The book really picks up momentum describing the excitement and naiveté of Erickson and professional partner Geoff Massey entering the Simon Fraser University design competition.  Biographer Stouck deftly conveys the youthful adrenalin, the excitement and originality of Erickson’s idea to design the campus like a series of tiered Balinese rice paddies down Burnaby Mountain.  It won!  What came next was a flurry of triumphs that defined his star-architect image.  Prestigious commissions to design the MacMillan Bloedel Building, Museum of Anthropology, Lethbridge University, Robson Square – all enormous triumphs.  But also Stouck gives details that were not widely known by the public, such as Erickson’s friendship and travels with Prime Minister Trudeau, life with his controversial partner Francisco, the wild, extravagant parties, while buying multiple California houses, driving a Maserati and hobnobbing with Shirley MacLaine, Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor – he seemed to have it all.

Then suddenly, the fall.  I remember touring the Toronto Erickson office in the 1980’s.  Rows and rows of drawing boards, covered in magnificent drawings of new Middle East projects – universities, city plans, museums, galleries and grand residences – outrageously grand and palatial, but not a one built.  It was the peak of Erickson’s “Hollywood” notoriety, when he claimed he did not spend more than 3 days in one place and then he would jet off to another country.    And then mysteriously, the Toronto Office closed.  Next the Los Angeles Office closed.  Headlines of unpaid bills, bankruptcy, abandoned offices and drawings in dumpsters.  In Canada there was shock, disbelief.  How could this happen?

The creator of some of Canada’s greatest buildings, Erickson reached the pinnacle and somehow, tragically, he died bankrupt, bitter, suspicious of loyal supporters, and worried about plagiarists after his drawings.  Cruelly, his mind started to lose focus, his memory seemed cloudy.  Finally he died of Alzheimer’s.

Canadian architects are recognized around the world as designers of beautiful, elegant buildings.  However, few have created such powerful forms and made such strong architectural statements as Erickson.  I always liked Erickson’s buildings.  Heroic, courageous, doing things nobody else would even dare think of, his work brought Canada a Japanese clarity of line, terraces, glass, cantilevers, aesthetic beauty, modernity.  His biographer has brought his subject impressive researching skills, understanding and a sympathy for his sometimes captious subject    After reading this — surely definitive — biography, I like Erickson’s even more.

John Ota is a freelance writer on architecture and design.
Arthur Erickson, An Architect’s Life was a finalist for the thirteenth RBC Taylor Prize that recognizes excellence in Canadian non-fiction writing.
David Stouck’s Arthur Erickson An Architect’s Life, Douglas and McIntyre, 396 pages, $34.95.