Abstract
In this paper I focus on Ralph Erskine's enduring image in architectural discourse as the Arctic Architect of Modernism. My interest lies with the relationship between portrayals of Erskine - both in textual accounts an images - and the way his sub-Arctic projects, especially his unrealised utopian projects for an ‘Ideal Town' north of the Arctic Circle, have been canonised in architectural discourse as exemplars of an architecture that is truly regional in character and, moreover, ideally suited to the unique cultural - especially with regard to indigenous populations - and environmental habitats of Arctic and sub-Arctic environments.
Highlights
In this paper I focus on Ralph Erskine’s enduring image in architectural discourse as the Arctic Architect of Modernism
Ralph Erskine (1914-2005), an English architect educated at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London during the 1930s, emigrated from Britain to Sweden in 1939; by all accounts, a move made earnestly
As early as 1977 Mats Egelius, a Swede who worked under Erskine in his architectural offices in Stockholm, labelled Erskine ‘Arctic Architect’ – an alias that has dominated our understanding of Erskine and his work ever since
Summary
In this paper I focus on Ralph Erskine’s enduring image in architectural discourse as the Arctic Architect of Modernism. For Oscar Arenales-Vergara, for example, a Spanish architect who worked in Erskine’s Stockholm offices in the 1980s, ‘The quintessence of Erskine’s character is exemplified in the manner in which he practiced one of his favorite sports, skiing, which he enjoyed up to his seventieth birthday’ (ArenalesVergara 2005: 98).
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