You may not see the rigid concrete forest for the trees, but the impenetrably dense massing of reinforced concrete soars upwards as high as the old growth in the lush forests that MacMillan Bloedel had been sawing through for decades...
The late venerable
Arthur Erickson [1924-2009] designed this raw concrete tapering tower back in the still freshly brewed essence of modernistic grinding through the 1960's - and steeped in his immersion of Japanese aesthetics, he applied the dictate of material integrity to his Emily Carr-inspired vision of gargantuan nature dominating the west coast landscape...
the offset halves of the west side facade with slim ribbons of glazing running down like rivulets of rain water...
27 storeys of deeply recessed windows with 7 foot square panes of glass create vertical waffled pools of watery reflections...
the offset halves of the east side facade ascend as tapering trunks of denuded giant firs...
around back, the brutalist effect of a medieval fortification is tempered by the elegant grey smoothness of sandblasted concrete and the bush-hammered texture of a solid elevation...
despite the thickset gridding and massive heaviness of concrete, there is a repetitive grace and a certain meditative quality to the geometrical formation that is the main facade of this stripped down monolith to a once ruthless clearcutter of tall trees in ancient forests...
"I don't think concrete is beautiful per se, but I think if one accepts it as the building stone of our century one find beautiful qualities in it - its earthiness, its mass, its traces of how it's made - I really do like it."
[Arthur Erickson from
Seven Stones, a Portrait of Arthur Erickson by Edith IGLAUER]
MacMillan Bloedel Building
1075 West Georgia Street
Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey, 1968-69
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