Review: Arthur Erickson: Between the Lines

Erickson was considered one of the best architects in Canada

This afternoon watched a fantastic biographical film called Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines produced by Black Rhino Creative which is based in Vancouver. The film debuted a few weeks ago at a local architecture festival and was sold out for all three dates.

I was hoping to have a chance to see it and Viff is showing it now.

The Museum of Anthropology at UBC

Arthur Erickson was a well known Vancouver-born architect, and he designed a number of key buildings in the city, from Simon Fraser University, to the Museum of Anthropology, the Law Courts with Robson Square, and MacMillan Bloedel Building, renamed Arthur Erickson Place three years ago.

His designs were also in Toronto like Roy Thomson Hall, the Government of Canada pavilion at Expo '70 on Osaka, Japan, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington State.

The film brings Erickson to life from a lot of television interviews together with his niece and nephews (two of whom are architects), and former colleagues and staff that give a more rounded picture of him.

It turns out Erickson was able to compartmentalise his life, as he hid that he was gay for a long time, and knew being gay was bad for business at the time; however he had a partner he loved very much who sadly died of Aids in the 1990s.

Campus of Simon Fraser University

When Erickson was young he was a talented artist, but in World War II he was in the army, where he learned Japanese in a bid to avoid combat. After the war he was keen on joining the diplomatic corps, but then a friend showed him a picture of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture and Erickson was amazed and wanted to learn how to create buildings in nature.

Erickson studied architecture at the University of British Columbia and in McGill in Montreal where he became friends with the future Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. 

Afterwards Erickson taught at UBC and began designing houses. He later met Geoffrey Massey and the pair went on to win the commission to build the SFU campus which was innovative at the time. They looked to the Acropolis for inspiration, how higher learning was found on the top of a mountain. They also created quadrants so that students and academics of different disciplines would interact with each other. 

One of the complaints was that in winter it was so dreary on campus that a professor once complained to Erickson about it. He replied that since the building elicited emotion, then the architect had done his job.

Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto

He was already very understanding of Indigenous culture, and the Museum of Anthropology demonstrates this, with the museum and totem poles facing the sea and how natural light affects how visitors see things in the space. 

From there they got a number of commissions inside and outside of Canada, but Massey was getting annoyed with Erickson's frivolous spending habits to please his partner, Venezuelan Francisco Kripacz, who designed furniture, went bankrupt and then Erickson took him in as an interior designer. 

Kripacz added flair to Erickson's designs, which made them a good team, but he had extravagant taste and influenced the architect to spend a lot of money. One time a party in their Los Angeles office cost $50,000 -- just for flowers.

Financial problems caused Erickson and Massey to break up their practice, and later on Erickson broke up with Kripacz. Erickson had another boyfriend, but then a mysterious disease called Aids was killing gay men, and his boyfriend died, as well as Kripacz's.

The two reunited, but Kripacz was infected as well. This was also around the time that Erickson declared bankruptcy in 1992, unable to pay all his bills. It was devastating because it meant he was unable to keep his license as an architect and would have to literally start all over again taking courses -- Erickson of all people who had taught architecture!

He refused, so he gave up his license, but was pretty much broke. In the 1990s Erickson phoned around, asking doctors for any kind of experimental drug that would help his partner; Erickson found some uncashed traveler's cheques and went to give them to Kripacz, but discovered he had committed suicide.

Kripacz was Erickson's longtime partner

His niece and nephews said Erickson could not get over this, and towards the end of his life began developing dementia. He would sit in his office with a magazine and forget about appointments and things he had to do. In the end his relatives had to put him in a home, where he did not last long, and died in 2009 at the age of 84.

I learned a lot about Erickson's life and career, as well as his approach to the various projects he worked on. Vancouver is so lucky to have many of his buildings, pockets of his vision around the city. It also helped that governments were willing to invest in big infrastructure projects like the provincial law courts and Robson Square to create public spaces for people.

Arthur Erickson: Between the Lines was a lovely tribute to him and showed that even when facing adversity, he did it with style. Even when he was announcing his bankruptcy he never let on his disappointment or frustration; he just carried on, dressed in his sharp suits.