Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines (2024)

Profiles Arthur Erickson, arguably the most renowned Canadian architect of his era, he who shaped much of the Vancouver built landscape with his designs for Simon Fraser University, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, and Robson Square/Vancouver Law Courts among a plethora of other iconic structures in the region and around the world. The influences on what many would consider his modernist/brutalist structures steeped in classical design is discussed. This profile includes his professional, family and personal lives, which he largely kept separate from each other, especially in that 'being gay was bad for business'. The primary intersection of those worlds is when his one time personal partner Francisco Kripacz, who many consider the true love of his life, designed the interiors for many of his projects. While he seemed to be given carte blanche in the 1960s and 1970s on his projects, he took a major fall from grace in the 1980s and 1990s with a bankruptcy and losing his accreditation in the profession, the reasons for this downfall presented. The affect of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s on his personal life, where many of his friends and lovers eventually died from the virus, is also discussed. His resurrection in the profession in the late 1990s and the 2000s to his death is also presented. —Huggo