[Redroom Studios]

will add an image soon unless someone can beat me to it!....

Jennifer Saltman, The Province with file from Cheryl Chan

Published: Monday, December 03, 2007
The owner of an Arthur Erickson-designed West Vancouver home is continuing with his plans to demolish the landmark.

Shiraz Lalji has applied to the District of West Vancouver for a demolition permit because the house, which is unoccupied, has not been maintained and he says it is in a state of severe disrepair.

The plan, according to the district, is to build a new house on the site.

The David Graham house, built in 1963, helped launch Erickson's reputation.

Many thought the lot, a rock cliff overlooking the ocean, could not be built on, but Erickson overcame the problem with a multi-storey wood-and-glass house that descends in levels.

The property, valued at almost $3.5 million, was bought by Lalji in September 1988 for $925,000.

Stephen Mikicich, the district's senior community planner, and members of the district's heritage working group met with Paul Fedusiak of West Vancouver's Goldwood Homes last week. Fedusiak acted as a representative for Lalji.

The goals of the meeting, said Mikicich, were to stress the building's heritage value, learn what Lalji's plans are and explore the options for saving the home.

Mikicich said Fedusiak told them Lalji is well aware of the significance of the house, which is recognized as a "primary" building on the district's survey of significant architecture from 1945 to 1975.

"In the end, this is private property we're talking about," said Mikicich, "so we're really looking to encourage conservation by the tools that are available to us."

Mikicich said the demolition permit can be issued at any time.

"We really don't have, as a local government, any legal authority to further delay a demolition permit," he said.

Although a demolition permit is imminent, 25-year old Simon Fraser University student Ari Mensurian said he's prepared to chain himself to the property and lie in the path of a bulldozer to save the house, which he calls an "important Canadian cultural icon."

"All of Arthur Erickson's buildings should be protected. It's time for Vancouver to mature as a city and protect what makes it unique," he said.

Mensurian, who staged a protest at the house last week, said he can see no structural damage to the building. "I don't see why the Erickson has to be torn down for a new house," he said.

Heritage West Vancouver president Carolanne Reynolds isn't ready to give up the fight, either.

"I really can't understand why a person with a piece of art like that wouldn't feel motivated to make it look its best and have the prestige of being in a house that's internationally known," she said.

At a council meeting last week, Reynolds asked council to delay issuing the permit for at least a week to explore the option of moving Graham house to a new location on Quadra Island.

Mikicich said the district is also working with the Arthur Erickson Conservancy to fully document the importance of 11 other Erickson homes in West Vancouver.

jensaltman@png.canwest.com




© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

[Redroom Studios]

Landmark Erickson house to be demolished
MARSHA LEDERMAN

December 3, 2007

VANCOUVER -- A demolition permit is expected to be issued this week, possibly as early as today, for an Arthur Erickson-designed house in West Vancouver.

The David Graham House, completed in 1963, helped kick-start Erickson's auspicious career. Set dramatically on a cliff "like a ladder," the house is multilevelled, with overlapping roofs and stacking terraces. "The living room is a hovering glass platform with marvellous twisted pines clinging to the rock around it," Erickson wrote in his 1975 book The Architecture of Arthur Erickson. "The master bedroom hangs over the sea and its bathroom opens on submarine windows into the swimming pool."

Erickson has credited the Graham House with launching his reputation as "the architect you went to when you had an impossible site."But in recent years, the house has fallen into a desperate state of disrepair. "Every beam is twisting and buckling, apparently," says West Vancouver Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones.

Along with the Arthur Erickson Conservancy, Goldsmith-Jones has been exploring options to try to save the structure, but she admits that's unlikely.

Nicholas Olsberg, co-author of Arthur Erickson Critical Works and the former Director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, calls the pending demolition a "significant" loss. The house, he says, is one of a handful of surviving private residences Erickson designed during that era, that created a dialogue "between building and land. "[The Graham House] is essentially a series of great beams that suspend themselves on a hillside," he said from his home in Patagonia, Arizona. "It's almost like you've made a house that makes a geometrical topography that relates to the ungeometric one that's in the real world ... like you took down the fir trees and you laid them cross-wise to make the dwelling within a forest."

At the same time, Olsberg understands it might not be feasible for a private owner to restore a house built during different times. "[It's] quite a modest house. I don't know where you put your big flat screen TV without interrupting the architectural feeling of it."

Still, Olsberg says the house is architecturally significant and community efforts should be made to try to save it. The house is on West Vancouver's list of significant heritage properties, but the list has "no teeth," Goldsmith-Jones says, so the government can't stop the demolition. And while it has tried to delay issuing the permit, she admits that tactic won't be able to continue much longer. While it appears to be too late for the Graham House, the controversy has lit a fire under Goldsmith-Jones to take steps to protect the remaining architectural gems in West Vancouver. She hopes to have a new policy in place by March.