After turning 80 in June it would be understandable for internationally-respected Vancouver architect Arthur Erickson to slow down.

But Erickson, who recently criticized a new building design spoiling his work at Simon Fraser University, has no intention of taking it easy.

In an interview with the Vancouver Sun, Erickson discussed this latest disappointment, his hopes for the future of housing in downtown Vancouver and his current architectural venture. He is redesigning the Evergreen Building, a 10-storey office complex considered an architectural landmark, which he created 24 years ago.

The terraced office complex, overlooking Coal Harbour, will become a 14-storey residential building and get a complete interior refit by Erickson. Construction is scheduled to begin, on the building at 1285 West Pender in January.

“We wanted the extra four stories to look like a lantern on top of the building,” he said.

“The lower part of the building is concrete and the upper is steel. We have to keep it as light as possible, so to go more than four stories could be difficult because of weight and earthquake considerations. The foundation is not built to take a larger building on top.”

Erickson praised the city for “responding to change” by agreeing to allow the conversion.

“There is nothing worse than digging your heels in, because then it [the Evergreen building] would deteriorate,” he said.

Building owner John Laxton said he decided to make the change because it was becoming increasingly difficult to pay the mortgage as office tenants left the downtown core for cheaper space elsewhere. [See front page article on the new Coal Harbour Residences.]

Erickson said he was pleased Laxton, who originally hired him to design the Evergreen building, asked him to oversee the conversion. And he’s pleased Laxton agreed to keep the building intact and simply “add something a little bit different.” Besides the four-storey addition the building will also have three townhouses facing Hastings Street.

“There’s a high demand for residential and most of the downtown office buildings are being transferred to residential,” he noted of the city’s changing landscape.

A long-time advocate for high-density, compact cities, Erickson first gained prominence as a young architect more than 40 years ago when he was selected to design Simon Fraser University. The university is in the midst of creating a large residential project called UniverCity, which will dramatically change the face of the campus with the addition of market and student housing.

Erickson, who disagreed with the design of the condominiums currently being built on site, spoke out last week to complain about the design of three new residential towers at SFU’s Burnaby campus — two of which opened last Thursday. He called the towers a “tragedy” that would spoil his original 1963 plan for the campus.

“The university is very famous because of its compactness, its adaptation to the site and the views. This [the eight-storey residential towers] contradicts everything,” he told the Sun.

“The university is known for its design all over the world. SFU was supposed to hug the mountain top and to be like a village.”

Erickson said he wishes former clients, like SFU, would come to him first before embarking on any designs.

“I’ve had some terrible disappointments,” he said, noting that in addition to the changes happening now at SFU, he also didn’t approve of the radical interior re-fit undertaken at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto.

At the time Erickson told the media the refit would needlessly obliterate the hall’s architectural character and was not necessary for acoustical improvements.

Erickson, who has referred to his work as his “children”, has always been interested in urban design and been a watchdog over what Vancouver’s planning department and local politicians were doing in his hometown. He believes the Greater Vancouver region, which has a population now of 2.1 million, should be planning for a metropolis of 15 million — a figure he upped a few years ago from 10 million.

“The ideal, of course, is to have as great a mix as possible,” he said, of the downtown core.

But Erickson is also pragmatic and noted the new developments happening now in Coal Harbour, for instance, will not include office space because it isn’t financially feasible.

“The [existing] mix between office and residential is fine and will still exist but not in the newer buildings,” he said.

Erickson said the 70 residential units he is designing for the new Coal Harbour Residences are priced for the very wealthy.

But ideally, he said, downtown housing should be for all income levels, from low to high. He suggested the lower income could be on the first two floors of new residential buildings while those able to pay full market value be on the third floor and above.

“If it were done properly it could be a mix. I’ve always said the early buildings in Europe had a nice division of wealth and lower income and that was simply by having the lower income on the lower floors and the upper income on the upper floors,” he said.

Erickson said he disagrees with the approach Vancouver city has been taking with downtown developments by approving low income housing in separate buildings adjacent to high-end developments.

“It looks very strange,” he said. “If it [both low and high income levels] were in the same building the appearances are not so significant.”

Erickson, who has lived for years in a converted garage in Point Grey, said he is excited about the changes happening to the Evergreen Building.

“It would be tough to leave [Point Grey] but something on the water with marvellous views does tempt me,” he said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004