CHRONICLE

Following the AEF's 25th Annual General Meeting on June 22, 2018, Trevor Boddy was appointed by directors' resolution to fill one of two Board vacancies. He joins four Board members re-elected at the AGM by acclamation: Phyllis Lambert, Neill Cumberbirch, William McLean, and Christopher Erickson. A further nine Board members continue in office, with terms expiring in 2019 and 2020. 

Mr. Boddy is a critic, curator, historian of architecture/urbanism, teacher and consulting urban designer. He curated the 2008 exhibition Vancouverism and related Trafalgar Square site-specific construction, named a marquee event for the 2008 London Festival of Architecture, and re-mounted in 2009 at Place d’Invalides, Paris. An expanded version was installed at Woodward’s for the 2010 Olympics. His career retrospective exhibition entitled Telling Details: The Architecture of Clifford Wiens toured nationally to five galleries nationally. For the City of Surrey he was co-organizer of TownShift: Suburb Into City, the largest ideas design competition ever mounted by a Canadian municipality, and conceived their new civic design awards.

Trevor has written on architecture and cities for the Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Seattle Times, Architectural Review, Architectural Record, Bauwelt, A/V and l’Architecture d’aujourdhui, and has won the Western Magazine and Alberta Book of the Year prizes. He holds a Master’s degree in architecture from the University of Calgary, has taught design studio, history, and urbanism on four continents, and lectures globally on contemporary design and city-building. RAIC awarded Trevor its 2010 Advocacy Award, and he is an honorary member of AIA and the Bulgarian Union of Architects.

AEF Director Michael Prokopow has published his new book: Smith House II. This monograph on the house of Gordon and Marion Smith, the second house designed by Arthur Erickson for the artists, is the seventh book in the UBC SALA West Coast Modern House series. The series was established to recognize and document significant, endangered modern residences in the region.

Guy Dixon, writing in the Globe & Mail 2018.05.08: "As with Mr. Erickson’s Robson Square in Vancouver and the Simon Fraser University campus in Burnaby, much of the late architect’s greatness was the dialogue he created between nature and modernism. And the possible loss of the atrium garden had conservationists particularly worried prior to the bank headquarters’ three-year, $460-million full-scale renovation, which was completed last year ... (read more)

The Arthur Erickson Foundation has welcomed its first Alliance level members: Nienkamper Furniture & Accessories Inc. (Klaus Nienkamper); and College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology (Michaelangelo Sabatino). Are you a firm or organization interested in upgrading to this new level of AEF support? Alliance benefits and privileges are explained here.

At its March 2018 meeting, AEF's Board of Directors appointed Linda Fraser, Archivist and Chief Curator at Canadian Architectural Archives, University of Calgary, and former AEF Board member, as the latest Patron of the Foundation. The appointment was pursuant to Bylaw 13.1.

From an undated speech, included in "Speeches by Arthur Erickson" (University of British Columbia Library): "The house was purchased in 1957 for $11,000. What attracted me to it was the garden—the whole of the property (66x120) was to the south of the house, since the house was on the lane, and had been developed as a colourful English herbaceous border garden concealing a vegetable and raspberry patch at the southern end. The house itself had been built about 40 years earlier as a garage to be lived in while the main house was built—properly, on the centre of the property. It was temporarily converted into a dwelling with a small lean-to and divided into a set of miniature rooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, front hall, bedroom and bathroom. But the owners never built the main house. Instead they added a single garage next door which, when I bought it, was used for storage.

"I set a destructive Irish sailor-handyman to taking down all the partitions, arriving only in time to save the collapse of the roof by propping it up with a wood and terra cotta Ionian column I had retrieved from the demolition of a former residence. That was the first conversion—as a one-roomed house furnished with marble slabs from the urinals of the old Vancouver Hotel and seating made from the straw benches of the former trolley cars of Vancouver, gold dragon's-blood Chinese paper lacquered into antiquity with many layers of pigmented lacquer and a teak cabinet kitchen. The garage became a guest room for visiting guests but only in summer for there was no heat.

"The garden changed more dramatically. In the second year long grass covered the property since it was never cut and the English garden struggled through the grass as if the place had been romantically deserted. But the third year the flowers no longer appeared, except for the forlorn roses hanging off the trellises and the grass was too long to even scythe. The only solution was to bring in a bulldozer and use it for contouring the lot to obscure the only disturbing view from the house—that down the length of the lot to the ugly brown shingle arched front porch of the neighbor across the street to the south …" 

AE in his living room at 4195 West 14th Avenue, 1972
Photo credit: Selwyn Pullan 

Brent Jang, writing in the Globe & Mail 2017.12.05: "It could be just the ticket for saving some of Vancouver's heritage properties, starting with the cherished home and garden of the late architect Arthur Erickson ... (read more)

As a result of a Special Resolution passed by members at their 2017 annual general meeting, the Arthur Erickson Foundation is now governed by new bylaws.

The bylaws are custom-made for AEF, and designed to dovetail with British Columbia's updated Societies Act legislation. This legislation was intended by the BC government to modernize and update the rules for the governance of all not-for-profit organizations incorporated in the province, including AEF. 

AEF's new bylaws, available by clicking here, have been completely rewritten since the 1993 originals. Notable revisions include those dealing with electronic participation at general and other meetings (bylaws 5.2 and 9.3), the nomination and election of new board members (bylaw 7.3), and rules for committees and councils (part 12).

The new bylaws came into effect on October 6, 2017.

Lara Fominoff, writing in the Lethbridge News Now 2017.12.06: "In Vancouver, a city where lots with just a single home are becoming closer to unicorn-like status, the Arthur Erickson Foundation is trying desperately to hold on to its property, to preserve it and to restore it as a heritage site. ... (read more)

Arthur's nephew and AEF Board member, Christopher Erickson, reminisces about the Erickson garden: "Not sure where the term 'Moon Viewing Platform' came from as it was not originally referred to as such. It had been a marble that Arthur had scored from the demolition of the old police station, but became so cracked over time it had to be replaced. Geoff and I installed this granite under Arthur’s supervision which he described as the 'Egyptian way' with a sand base. The granite was donated by Frank Mahovolich, a great supporter of Arthur. I always thought the marble looked better, but you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth."