CBC

Arthur Erickson

Today, Arthur Erickson’s celebrity status has faded into our collective memory; we recall only vague images of the Vancouver architect hobnobbing with stars like Donald Sutherland and Shirley MacLaine or good friend Pierre Trudeau, for whom Erickson designed a getaway in the Laurentian mountains. But at the height of his powers, between the early 1960s and the early 1980s, Erickson was a bona fide superstar, a giant in a field filled with larger-than-life figures. More than 40 years ago, Erickson found his muse in concrete and the grey skies and watery light of his beloved West Coast. The modernist architect, who turns 82 next month and still labours away in his False Creek office, is now the subject of a huge retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery.