Arthur Erickson’s contribution to twentieth-century architecture and culture has been primarily analyzed in relation to his native country Canada, in which his most compelling built environments were realized. Eschewing a nationalist agenda in favor of a broader historiographical perspective, this book repositions Erickson as part of a generation of North American architects who strove to rethink post-World War II modernism, focusing on the unconventional attitudes he adopted with respect to culture, history, and site during his architectural studies and extensive world travels. To this end, the book posits a new interpretative framework based upon Erickson’s strategic use of two architectural types, the pavilion and the landform, which can be traced to the beginnings of architecture.

Michelangelo Sabatino is professor and director of the PhD program in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture. He is the author of Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (2010) and coauthor of (with Jean-Francois Lejeune) Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues and Contested Identities (2010). He coedited, with Linda Fraser, Arthur Erickson: Layered Landscapes (2013).