"We needn't destroy other cultures..." -- Arthur Erickson

The design magazine Azure has a brief tribute by Adele Weder to the late architect Arthur Erickson in its July/August issue:

In the dusk of life, the Erickson persona shifted from entrepreneur terrible to elder statesman. His essays and speeches on art, rationalism and cultural erosion remain strikingly pertinent. “I have come to plead for conservation, not of the environment, but of human culture, which is much more fragile than nature herself,” he once told a group of bankers, warning against the ravages of global development and tourism industries. “We needn’t destroy other cultures with the force of our own and destroy, at the same time, the chance to renew ourselves by our experience of them.” That plea was issued in 1972, long before its urgent truth was accepted widely. It’s a philosophy that, along with his monuments, has become his legacy.