2001 Presenter Full Presenter List

Arthur Charles Erickson

Architect

Arthur Erickson is an internationally recognized, award-winning architect who has been likened to a concrete poet for his design of large-scale contemporary architecture. His works include Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the San Diego Convention Center, Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall, Robson Square, Vancouver’s three-block civic centre, and the Canadian Chancery in Washington, DC. Erickson studies at UBC and later at McGill University in Montreal.

As both architect and professor, Erickson’s innovative design work earned him the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 1986. The citation for the award called him a “global architect” whose work had a “deep respect for context, incomparable freshness and grace, and the dramatic use of space and light… He has brought to his work an understanding of the community of man.”

He was the first Canadian to receive this award. Erickson also received numerous other awards and degrees, including gold medals from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada in 1984 and the French Académie d’Architecture in 1986. He opened his own practice in 1963 and currently serves as principal of Arthur Erickson Architectural Corporation in Vancouver.