Arthur Erickson Tis Quotations

Part of our western outlook stems from the scientific attitude and its method of isolating the parts of a phenomenon in order to analyze them.

Roman civilization had achieved, within the bounds of its technology, relatively as great a mastery of time and space as we have achieved today.

The Achilles Heel of the Americas was the lack of cultural confidence typical of new settlers.

The essentially unchangeable established order of things slowly disappeared and was forgotten for a while completely.

The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe.

We are yet to have a conscience at all about the exploitation of human cultures.

We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist.

Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.

Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind.

God's designs may be frequent justification for our actions, but it is we, the self-made men, who take the credit.

Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.

Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.

No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.

Western history has been a history of deed done, actions performed and results achieved.

We are stymied by regulations, limited choice and the threat of litigation. Neither consultants nor industry itself provide research which takes architecture forward.

The artist likes to seem totally responsible for his work. Often he begins to explain it, to make it appear as if it were a reasonable process.

We regard those other cultures, such as that of India, where many people live and believe and behave much as they did 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, as undeveloped.

There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to its early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization.

I plead for conservation of human culture, which is much more fragile than nature herself. We needn't destroy other cultures with the force of our own.

In those countries with centuries of a craft tradition behind their building methods, techniques are tightly coordinated under the direction of the architect.

No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems.

With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption.

The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events.

This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see... the inveterate materialism which has become the model for cultures around the world.

Builders eventually took advantage of the look of modernism to build cheaply and carelessly.

You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.

Our engineering departments build freeways which destroy a city or a landscape, in the process.

Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building.