Arthur Erickson

MacMillan Bloedel Office Tower, 1969
Revitalizing downtown Vancouver, two offset narrow slabs of offices are linked by a stair/elevator core, with a sunken plaza along Georgia Street. One of the world's best applications of post-Le Corbusier Brutalism to a downtown office tower, it is notable for its trabeated cast concrete frame, and the "entasis' or slimming as its office floors rise.

Museum of Anthropology, UBC, 1976
For an unsurpassed Northwest First Nations material culture collection, Erickson drew inspiration from Haida and Kwakiutl ocean-fronting hewn cedar houses, but abstracted their shapes, then transformed them materially from wood to concrete. This results in a serene and almost balletic progression of concrete portal frames, and receding, rough-textured walls.

Robson Square, 1972-1983
This three-block series of gardens, offices and law courts, and home of the Vancouver Art Gallery is a hybrid of suburban and urban sensibilities. Erickson, in collaboration with landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander, explores as never before the concept of building-as-landscape and landscape-as-building.
Photo: Ezra Stoller, ESTO and Arthur Erickson Conservancy

Waterfall Building, 2002
The Waterfall Building groups 50 flexible live-or-work units around a U-shaped south-facing courtyard. Employing a variation on Le Corbusier's interlocking Unit d'habitation cross-section, each studio enjoys exposure to light and breezes on both sides, and the building uses heat recovered from a computer 'server farm' in the basement.