Arthur Erickson

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

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

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

The tourist transports his own values and demands to his destinations and implants them like an infectious disease, decimating whatever values existed before.

The obsession with performance left no room for the development of the intuitive or spiritual impact of space and form other than the aesthetic of the machine itself.

Space has always been the spiritual dimension of architecture. It is not the physical statement of the structure so much as what it contains that moves us.

There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a revolution of a much more profound and fundamental nature than the social and political revolutions of the last half century.

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.

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

We have today a fairly thorough knowledge of the early Greco-Roman period because our motivations are the same.

Our universities advocate fragmentation in their course systems.

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