Arthur Erickson Quotes

Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.

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

Inspiration in Science may have to do with ideas, but not in Art. In art it is in the senses that are instinctively responsive to the medium of expression.

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

Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.

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

No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly.

No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems.

No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.

Nowhere has specialization penetrated so deeply into the building professions as North America.

Only when inspired to go beyond consciousness by some extraordinary insight does beauty manifest unexpectedly.

Our engineering departments build freeways which destroy a city or a landscape, in the process.

Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.

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

Our universities advocate fragmentation in their course systems.

Part of our western outlook stems from the scientific attitude and its method of isolating the parts of a phenomenon in order to analyze them.

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

Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.

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

Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that moves us.

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.

The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process.

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.

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

The great dream merchant Disney was a success because make-believe was what everyone seemed to need in a spiritually empty land.