Special event for the RAIC Conference on Architecture.
A Rare Visit to One of the Masterpieces of Canadian Architecture: The 1964 Gordon and Marion Smith II House by Arthur Erickson, West Vancouver
A Fundraiser for The RAIC Foundation
Prominent abstract painter Gordon and textile artist Marion Smith were leading B.C. artists and among Arthur Erickson’s very first clients for a small house in the mid-1950s, when he was a young UBC professor. In 1964 Erickson completed a second, more visually ambitious house-studio design for the couple, along with a garden of his own design on a magnificent, wooded site overlooking the Georgia Strait. Barely 2,000 square feet in size and first built for $30,000 on a $6,000 lot, this is the design that sparked Erickson’s global career, with its hugely cantilevered cedar “flying beams,” and squared spiral plan around a courtyard and fountain. Smith II is almost certainly the most famous and influential Canadian house of the twentieth century, but very few RAIC members have ever had a chance to visit this brilliant small house and its setting, in full May bloom.
This is your rare chance, specially arranged for the 100th anniversary of Erickson’s birth in 1924. The RAIC has worked with current owners and art collectors-curators Daina Augaitis and Andy Sylvester to permit a fundraising tour of the house, their art collection, and the garden, with partial proceeds going to the RAIC Foundation.
Strictly limited to no more than 28 guests, the one-time only tour will be led by critic-historian Trevor Boddy, FRAIC and Clinton Cuddington of Measured Architecture, the firm that has just completed the full restoration of the house and garden.
When:
- May 17, 2024
- Tour includes roundtrip shuttle transportation from the Sheraton Wall Vancouver (1000 Burrard Street)
- Departure time 1:15pm PT
- Return time: 4:15pm PT
Do not hesitate, register today to book your place before it is full.
Background:
Current owners and restoration clients for Smith II are Daina Augaitis, the former Chief Curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery and now the lead gardener with Liana Sipelis, and Andy Sylvester owner of leading art dealer, Equinox Gallery. Clinton Cuddington is the co-founder of Vancouver’s Measured Architects, whose corten-sheathed Shor House won the 2023 Architecture MasterPrize for best residence worldwide. Trevor Boddy FRAIC is a Vancouver architecture critic, historian and curator whose work has won the Alberta Book of the Year Award and international writing prizes.
Please visit and read his recent story on Smith II’s restoration, here. He writes “Smith II was Erickson’s riposte to those more famous glass houses, Mies van der Rohe’s 1945 Farnsworth House and Phillip Johnson’s 1948 Glass House.”
For more information on the RAIC Foundation benefitting from the tour, please visit: https://www.raicf.ca/en/
The tour is now SOLD OUT. If you would like to be added to a waitlist, please complete this form: Waitlist for Pop Up Tour .