Arts and Literature in Canada:Views from Abroad, Les arts et la ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

IJCS/RIÉCFigure 6.Arthur Erickson, Bank of Canada Headquarters Building, Ottawa, Ontario, 1969 (author).local vernaculars, and regional traditions,” and the sensitive integration of hisRobson Square Redevelopment (Vancouver, B. C., 1973) into Vancouver'scity life obviously “embraces architecture as a public language.” Even worksthat appear to embody the Modern Movement's stripped aesthetic andtechnological primacy were, according to the architect, conceived in broaderterms. His MacMillan Bloedel Building (Vancouver, B. C., 1965), a slender,gracefully tapered, 27-story tower, embodies the essence of modernism in theuncompromising structural honesty of its poured-in-place concrete frame.Erickson (1988, p. 59), nevertheless, viewed this building, which wasconceived in the tradition of the load-bearing wall, as a plausible counterpointto the impermanent curtain-walled office tower. Although the reflective glassdrum of his Roy Thomson Hall (Toronto, Ont., 1976) seems barren andplaceless on its urban lot, the architect, forced by site constraints to containspectacle to the interior, asserted a desire to recover the grandeur of nineteenthcenturyopera houses (Erickson, 1988, p. 135). In other words, Erickson'sbuildings have always embodied the double-coding of postmodernism bybringing high architecture's formal concerns more closely in resonance withdaily life and cultural traditions through the production of buildings bearingmultiple codes of meaning and expressing aesthetic diversity.Cross-disciplinary efforts to make postmodern sense of contemporary cultureand its architecture afford proactive frameworks for analyzing Erickson'swork. According to Frederic Jameson (1991), postmodernism is the34
The Architecture of Arthur Erickson: Redeeming Modernityarchitecture of late-capitalism which extends and elaborates the aesthetics ofmodernism. This ideology resonates with the intertextuality betweenErickson's Bank of Canada addition and the art moderne block it surrounds, orthe Canadian Chancery's compositional affinity with Le Corbusier'sMonastère Sainte Marie de la Tourette (Eveux-sur-Arbresle, France, 1952-59), an exemplar of High Modernism. With a respect for the popular nurturedby Learning from Las Vegas, postmodern buildings can be read as signs to beconsumed (see Venturi, 1972). Erickson's colossal colonnade for the CanadianChancery (Figure 7) and his totem-like concrete piers and beams of theAnthropology Museum are readily consumed as signs bearing implicit andexplicit meanings. So too, they “float at a certain distance from each other, in amiraculous statis or suspension,” an attribute Jameson (1991, p. 100) ascribedto postmodernism's ability to loosen the conceptual definitions and formalparameters of modernism.In the postmodern discourse and in Erickson's buildings alike, other modernistdoctrines are rethought and reinterpreted. Stretching the tenets of the ModernMovement's open planning, the postmodern interior encompasses a“hyperspace” where volumes are impossible to seize (Jameson, 1991, p. 143).Erickson's Simon Fraser University and the Vancouver Law Courts, whosespace-frames enfold autonomous, total spaces, have such horizontal andvertical attenuation. In response to “new ways individuals move andcongregate” (Jameson, 1991, p. 40) their larger complexes constituteminiature cities where consumers of these built environments can make theirown meanings through ordinary utilization.Further contiguity is evidenced by high technology's prominence in both themodern and the postmodern discourses. Information technologies are at theforefront of postmodern culture whose social life and economic order arecharacterized by mass media and multi-national corporations (Jameson, 1983,p. 113). So too postmodern building can celebrate high constructiontechnologies as still another new information system; Erickson's virtuosity inbringing craftsmanlike articulation to the modern movement's steel, glass andconcrete has always done so. Through a material that Jameson (1991, p. 51)characterized as “thematic of reproductive technology,” Erickson's occasionalflirtations with reflective glass, in the functionally and contextually diverseexamples of his Bank of Canada and the Expo '70 Canada Pavilion (Osaka,Japan), foster a visual blurring of the old and the new in Ottawa, and thehuman-made and the natural environments in Osaka. A parallel blurringabolishes the distinction between inside and outside, desired but rarelyachieved in High Modernism. At the Law Courts and in the AnthropologyMuseum, slick glass skins poetically merge interior space with distinctivesurrounding sites, overarching each discrete context. In contrast, through theambiguity of the Canadian Chancery's courtyard—physically outside, butformally constricted and contained, the implicit tensions of modernism andpostmodernism are revealed through the interpenetration of building spaceand the street.35
Page 2 and 3: Editorial Board / Comité de rédac
Page 4 and 5: Review Essays/Essais critiquesLorna
Page 6 and 7: IJCS / RIÉCthe United States, from
Page 8 and 9: Barbara KorteEnglish-Canadian Persp
Page 10 and 11: English-Canadian Perspectives of La
Page 24 and 25: IJCS/RIÉCd'Erickson nous permet de
Page 26 and 27: IJCS/RIÉCFigure 2.Arthur Erickson,
Page 28 and 29: IJCS/RIÉCthe Killam-Massey House (
Page 30 and 31: IJCS/RIÉCFigure 4.Arthur Erickson,
Page 34 and 35: IJCS/RIÉCFigure 7.Canadian Chancer
Page 36 and 37: IJCS/RIÉCalso situationally and co
Page 38 and 39: IJCS/RIÉCthe abstract modernism of
Page 40 and 41: IJCS/RIÉCsurmounted by a massive o
Page 42 and 43: Dorothée KomTypologie des narratai
Page 44 and 45: Typologie des narrataires dans les
Page 58 and 59: Elisabeth CencigThe Jordans:Remembe
Page 60 and 61: The Jordans. Remembered and Invente
Page 80 and 81: Roshan G. ShahaniIn Quest of a Habi
Page 82 and 83:
Immigrant Voices from Indiapromised
Page 84 and 85:
Immigrant Voices from Indiawhich is
Page 86 and 87:
Immigrant Voices from IndiaLikewise
Page 88 and 89:
Immigrant Voices from Indiawrong re
Page 90 and 91:
Immigrant Voices from India15. Nich
Page 92 and 93:
IJCS/RIÉCreprésentatifs du Québe
Page 94 and 95:
IJCS/RIÉCUn monde isoléL’auteur
Page 96 and 97:
IJCS/RIÉCÀ force de considérer l
Page 98 and 99:
IJCS/RIÉChazard Michel qui est dev
Page 100 and 101:
IJCS/RIÉCRebutée par cet univers,
Page 102 and 103:
IJCS/RIÉCJe ne faisais plus partie
Page 104 and 105:
Karen GouldRefiguring the Mother:Qu
Page 106 and 107:
Refiguring the Mother: Quebec Women
Page 108 and 109:
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Ursula Mathis« La Mariouche est po
Page 118 and 119:
Les autochtones dans la chanson can
Page 120 and 121:
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
Page 126 and 127:
Page 128 and 129:
Page 130 and 131:
Page 132 and 133:
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Lorna IrvineZoning Canada’s Zeitg
Page 142 and 143:
Zoning Canada’s Zeitgeistand immi
Page 144 and 145:
Zoning Canada’s Zeitgeistpromulga
Page 146 and 147:
Zoning Canada’s Zeitgeistspeculat
Page 148 and 149:
IJCS/RIÉCLa remise en question du
Page 150 and 151:
IJCS/RIÉCmondiale a poussés à r
Page 152 and 153:
IJCS/RIÉCtexte présenté lors d
Page 154 and 155:
IJCS/RIÉCle contraire de cette ré
Page 156 and 157:
IJCS/RIÉCmétropole d’autant plu
show all

Arts and Literature in Canada:Views from Abroad, Les arts et la ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?