"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"
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Erickson laments a culture of building that chases quantifiable results at the expense of experiential depth. Performance promises measurable gains: structural efficiency, speed of construction, mechanical prowess, energy targets, budget discipline. Yet a building can tick every metric and still fail to move the human spirit. By invoking the aesthetic of the machine, he points to a modernist inheritance that prized clarity, precision, and utility but often flattened the richer, less measurable qualities that give space its meaning.
The intuitive and spiritual impact he invokes lives in elements that do not fit neatly on a spreadsheet: the way light washes a wall at dusk, the pause a threshold invites, the hush of a high volume, the grounding feel of stone underfoot, the release of a view unfolding at the turn of a stair. These encounters shape memory, dignity, and belonging. They are not opposed to performance; they simply require a different kind of attention, one trained on perception, ritual, and the body moving through space.
Erickson spoke from the vantage of a modernist who refused to abandon humanism. His Simon Fraser University terraces bind a campus to the mountain and sky with ceremonial gravity. The Museum of Anthropology at UBC translates post-and-beam archetypes into concrete and glass that breathe with Pacific light and coastal air. Robson Square dissolves the courthouse into a cascading civic landscape. Each project performs, but the performance is a means, not an end; the end is resonance.
The critique remains timely as contemporary practice leans into digital optimization and sustainability metrics. Energy models and smart systems matter, but they can become a new machine aesthetic if pursued without poetic intent. The challenge is synthesis: let performance serve the making of places that calm, provoke, gather, and uplift. When space and form are tuned to human intuition, a building becomes more than a device; it becomes a vessel for shared experience.
The intuitive and spiritual impact he invokes lives in elements that do not fit neatly on a spreadsheet: the way light washes a wall at dusk, the pause a threshold invites, the hush of a high volume, the grounding feel of stone underfoot, the release of a view unfolding at the turn of a stair. These encounters shape memory, dignity, and belonging. They are not opposed to performance; they simply require a different kind of attention, one trained on perception, ritual, and the body moving through space.
Erickson spoke from the vantage of a modernist who refused to abandon humanism. His Simon Fraser University terraces bind a campus to the mountain and sky with ceremonial gravity. The Museum of Anthropology at UBC translates post-and-beam archetypes into concrete and glass that breathe with Pacific light and coastal air. Robson Square dissolves the courthouse into a cascading civic landscape. Each project performs, but the performance is a means, not an end; the end is resonance.
The critique remains timely as contemporary practice leans into digital optimization and sustainability metrics. Energy models and smart systems matter, but they can become a new machine aesthetic if pursued without poetic intent. The challenge is synthesis: let performance serve the making of places that calm, provoke, gather, and uplift. When space and form are tuned to human intuition, a building becomes more than a device; it becomes a vessel for shared experience.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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