THE home Asth

wa tes! ae NEWS photo ttiee Wokefield
rthur Erickson designed for Gordon and Marion Smith Is the
architect’s masterplece and marks the beginning of his interest in the

Wednesday, May 10, 2000 - North Shore News - 23

Thi dig RAT AARON TILER AAT

Binning home

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Altamount in the mid-°30s, befor: the Lions Gate
Bridge was open and while prices were low, The
house Binning designed maximize 1 the potential of
the sloping sight and took aulauage of natural
light and views. It was also economical, completed
in 19-41 ata cost of $5,000, using build-
ing materials that were both inexpensive
and readily available: cedar V-joint
boards for exterior and interior walls,
and fir plywood for bathroom and
kitchen cabinets.

Once completed, the home became a
salon, a kind of clubhouse, says Boddy,
for modern architecture and painting in
Vancouver. Binning was an early sup-
porter of Arthur Erickson and mentor to
Ron Thom. “Artists from London and
New York all passed through these
doors,” says Boddy of the residence,
occupied to this day by Jessie Binning,
who regularly opens the house to visiting
scholars interested in her late husband’s
work.

You can’t have good architecture
without a good client, says Boddy, on

livinaroon
became salon

few months afterwards,” savs Marion.

The architect took his cues from the site. Spiral
in plan, with walls of glass, the post-and-beam
house bridges a gully benveen two rocky outcrop-
pings. Great cedar beams extend vertically beyond
the structure, leading the viewer's eye into the for-
est and connecting the house with nature. A sepa-

NEWS photo Paul McGrath.

the road to the next stop on the heritage A handful of houses give West Van its global reputa-
tour, an Arthur Erickson design home _ tion as a place of innovation, says Trevor Boddy.

on The Byway, a gravel lane off Marine
Drive west of Lighthouse Park.

“Erickson absolutely owes his reputation to this
community and to his patrons. He would not be
the internationally prominent figure he is today
were it not for his start almost exclusively doing
houses in West Vancouver.”

Erickson’s clients for this home were friends
Gordon and Marion Smith. The painter and his
wife commissioned young architects Erickson and
Geoff Massey to design their first home in 1953,

_ since demolished.

“We learned a lot from the first house ... like to
mind our own business,” recalls Marion during the
tour. The young architects were so green that they

‘had partly constructed the first house before some-

one inquired about the need for a building permit.
“We've always been friends but we weren't for a

rate studio was built and the tercaced. gardens:
updated in the mid-’80s by Russell Hollingsworth, .”

another North Shore architect of note. sans

It is the Binning and Smith residences, along:
with five or six others that give West Vancouver its ©
worldwide reputation as a place of great innovation:
in the °40s through the ’60s, says Trevor Boddy, - °
who remarks on the enduring nature of the designs
today. ; ”

“To me, the human story of how buildings are.
made and lived in and how they've adapted over
time, is a wonderful one. It’s two-by-fouzs and ply-:
wood. There’s nothing exceptional in what we're
seeing today. What is exceptional is the sense-that_
the old cules don’t apply — the attitude of ‘Let's,

try something new; let's give it ago’?

‘post-and-beam constructions of the Haida and Kwaiduti First Nations

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