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As part of its belief in and commitment to supporting emerging architecture practitioners, today the Arthur Erickson Foundation and the Yosef Wosk Family Foundation announced a $110,000 donation to Indspire – Canada’s national, award-winning Indigenous registered charity – in support of Indigenous youth in Canada. The donation will fund an awards program focused on increasing Indigenous student success by growing the number of Indigenous architects and landscape architects in Canada.

The Arthur Erickson Foundation was founded as the Arthur Erickson House and Garden Foundation in 1993, and later became the owner of the Erickson property at 4195 West 14th Avenue in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Following Arthur Erickson’s death in May 2009, the Arthur Erickson Foundation expanded its mandate to include education, research and preservation.

Central to Arthur Erickson’s work as an architect and theorist was his belief in and commitment to education and research. Having served on the faculties of architecture at the University of Oregon and the University of British Columbia, Erickson understood the need of each generation to contribute to the training of the next. One of the ways the foundation honours Erickson’s belief is by working with donors to develop prizes and scholarships intended to reward and assist students studying architecture and landscape architecture.

“The Arthur Erickson Foundation and Yosef Wosk Family Foundation, along with Indspire, are pleased to announce the establishment of an awards program supporting Indigenous education in architecture and landscape architecture,” said Michael Prokopow, Vice President (East) Arthur Erickson Foundation. “The organizations recognize the profound importance of the shared work of decolonization and reconciliation in Canada for the transformation of society. These awards recognize the deep power of Indigenous thinking and wisdom around the making of habitation and space for wellbeing across generations and the vitally important stewardship of the natural world.”

Mike DeGagné, President and CEO of Indspire, stated, “This new investment is a significant step in supporting First Nations, Inuit and Métis architecture and landscape architecture students to achieve their potential through education and training. They can in turn enrich their communities and create positive change in Canada. We are grateful for the support of the Arthur Erickson Foundation and the Yosef Wosk Family Foundation for investing in Indigenous achievement and education.”

As reported by Kenneth Chan in the Daily Hive (October 8, 2020): "Thom and his namesake firm designed an architectural concept that adds a world-class art museum underneath Robson Square, demarcated by a new glass-enclosed atrium grand entrance on the west side of the plaza at street level — near the southwest corner of the intersection of Robson Street and Hornby Street ..."
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From AEF's Board to all members and friends on April 14, 2020: "Like your own lives our operations have been impacted by the pandemic, but we wish to assure you that the AEF's governance is intact. The Board is continuing to meet, plan, and manage. We wanted to take this opportunity to report on the subjects which are currently occupying us, as we collectively wait for the "all-clear" ...
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Over the past decades, the Erickson Garden pond has gradually become shallower as silt and organic material accumulated. One adverse effect of the shallower water was a relative increase in temperature, making it less hospitable as a frog habitat. A full restoration of the pond will come eventually, but in the meantime, remediation was called for. Neill Cumberbirch, member of AEF's House & Garden Committee, reports: "It took five days of digging and wheelbarrowing of material from the pond to the bins located outside the gate on the boulevard. There was 3 to 4 inches of fine silt on top of 8 inches of matted root material, leaves and astonishingly well preserved pine needles and below that the original membrane. We removed material down to the membrane being careful not to damage it. The total water depth is now at its original 18”. Before we started it was 6” ... We left approximately 20% of the original root mass in the pond for regeneration of the waterlilies and irises."

The photos show conditions before, during, and immediately after this remediation, which took place in Spring 2020.

The chair of the Arthur Erickson Foundation council, Phyllis Lambert, has written to Simon Fraser University president Andrew Petter and campus planning and development director Ian Abercrombie, demanding the school halt demolition and assess Madge Hogarth House for heritage value. An Erickson/Massey work, the Women's Residence (as it was then known) was one of the great original campus buildings of 1965.
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Reviewer Alex Bozikovic, writing in The March 15, 2019 edition of The Globe & Mail about Greg Bellerby's new book, "Eppich House II: The Story of an Arthur Erickson Masterwork": "It aligns Erickson with this moment in architecture ... He is ripe for discovery by a new generation ...".
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On March 2, 2019 CBC News reported: "Even for an architect whose wide range includes the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the MacMillan Bloedel building in downtown Vancouver, and Simon Fraser University, Eppich House II — which is now up for sale — stands out for several reasons ..."
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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)

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