Arthur Charles Erickson CC FAIA FRAIC Hon FRIBA (June 14, 1924 – May 20, 2009) was a Canadian architect and urban planner. He studied at the University of British Columbia and, in 1950, received his B.Arch. (Honours) from McGill University. He is known as one of Canada's most influential architects and was the only Canadian architect to win the American Institute of Architects AIA Gold Medal (in 1986, for the Embassy of Canada, Washington, D.C.). When told of Erickson's award, Philip Johnson said, "Arthur Erickson is by far the greatest architect in Canada, and he may be the greatest on this continent."

Erickson was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on June 14, 1924. The son of Oscar Erickson and Myrtle Chatterson, he had an early interest, and talent for, painting and horticulture. As had his father, Erickson served in the Canadian Army, enlisting with the Canadian Army Intelligence Corps during World War II and serving in India, British Ceylon, and Malaysia.

Erickson's original intention was to go into the Diplomatic corps; he changed his mind when he saw the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. He studied at the University of British Columbia, followed by the McGill University School of Architecture. After graduating from McGill in 1950, Erickson was granted a travel scholarship and traveled around the Mediterranean, studying climate and style in their relationship to architecture. He spent ten years teaching at the University of Oregon and the University of British Columbia, during which time he designed some of British Columbia's most important houses – Canadian Homes Magazine called his 1959 Filberg House "Canada's most fabulous house". Erickson spent a few years at Thompson Berwick and Pratt and Partners then, in 1962, founded Erickson/Massey Architects with Geoffrey Massey. In 1963, Erickson and Massey submitted the winning design for Simon Fraser University.

Erickson's early buildings were often modernist concrete or wooden structures designed to respond to the natural conditions of their locations, especially climate. Erickson always integrated light and water features into his designs, along with the characteristic horizontal elements and terraces that came from the vernacular architecture of the Far East. Many buildings, such as the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, were inspired by the post and beam architecture of the Coastal First Nations, Asian temples and the North American log cabin. Erickson is also known for numerous futuristic designs such as the Fresno City Hall, the UCI School of Biological Sciences and the 1967 Catton House, also known as the 'Starship House'.

His work balanced the style of modernism with an integration of the surrounding natural environment. Erickson constantly stressed the importance of greenery and water in all of his designs. As a teacher, he impressed this upon his students by making them draw blades of grass. He insisted on bringing in a landscape architect at the outset of all of his projects.^{[citation needed]} Together with the landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander he designed prevailing public spaces in Vancouver. In the 1980s Erickson designed several modernist homes. Eppich House II for the industrialist Hugo Eppich is considered Erickson's best design for a modernist home. Every aspect, including the surrounding landscape, was designed by Erickson or his business partners.

Simon Fraser University is located on top of Burnaby Mountain, at Greater Vancouver's eastern edge, 1,214 feet above sea level. The scale of the project is reminiscent of utopian designs from French architects in the late eighteenth century such as Etienne-Louis Bouillee, and provides a balance between the British Columbia context and the structural ambitions of the 1960s period of Modern architecture. The unfinished concrete blends in with the surrounding geography in colour but not in shape. When viewed from above in plan, the campus forms a geometric contrast to the snowy mountains of its context but does not interfere with the site's spectacular views and is open to its natural surroundings. While Erickson had 900 acres on which to build, he kept the campus tight and left the rest for meadow and playing fields. The design features a covered plaza with massive skylights which respond to Vancouver's wet climate. The campus is landscaped to provide numerous small spaces for study; in its centre, Erickson placed a large rectangular pool containing an enormous block of Fraser River jade. Perhaps most significantly, academic disciplines are not isolated in separate buildings; the campus is a quadrangle designed so that people have to cross paths and interact with each other. The design was met with international acclaim, with one critic writing that it "answered questions about the nature of education".

The Museum of Anthropology was built in 1976, as an inclusion to the campus at the University of British Columbia. It houses artifacts and exhibits from world cultures, with an emphasis on Pacific Northwest cultures and the First Nations of British Columbia. This building blends methods of reinforced concrete and the traditional post-and-beam construction to articulate the structure. Oversized beams evoke a monumental feeling in many of Erickson's projects, calling on the size and scale of the trees found in the surrounding context. It is well known for Erickson's use of concrete piers and large stretches of glass. By using concrete beams to represent de-materialized logs and opening up the main atrium through expanses of glass, Erickson refers to the traditional notion of post-and-beam construction while integrating these characteristics into a modernist building. The structure sits on a promontory facing the ocean and mountains. The landscape of the site was particularly important, as Erickson wanted to depict the connection between indigenous Pacific Northwest cultures to the land. He and Oberlander studied the landscapes of Haida Gwaii, with its totem poles standing on mounds covered with wild grasses and surrounded by forest. A seed expert provided the correct plantings of indigenous grasses and flowers, fallen logs were left in situ, a gravel pond was created to reflect the mountains and sky, and mounds of earth were used to both muffle traffic and create the sense of hills rolling to the ocean. The university describes the museum as: ..."a total work of art, expressing a convergence of the site, building, collection and the performances and ceremonies that take place there."

Built in Vancouver in 1979 as a large civic center, Erickson's design for Robson Square included waterfalls, a roof garden, several plazas, and stairs with ramps integrated within. This complex is one of the few in North America that integrates everything from public space and landscape to a set of surrounding buildings, spanning from the art gallery to the law courts. Many changes have been made to the square since it was first built, and some complain that certain changes conflict with the intent of the original design. For example, glass barriers have been installed near the waterfall, preventing people from getting close to it, and barriers have also been installed on the edges of planters to stop people from sitting on them. It has also since lost the outdoor restaurants, cinema, and large auditorium that once existed on the site. On the design of the roof garden, Erickson was assisted by his former student, architect Bing Thom; the landscape architect on Robson Square was Cornelia Oberlander.