February 11, 1976: The Vancouver Sun
By MOIRA FARROW
Architect Arthur Erickson has reduced the size of the paper pavilion by a third and he hopes he has cut its $600,000 price tag in half.
And the entire project, he said in an interview Thursday, has resulted in the development of an entirely new building technology using paper products.
"We are not building something useless that will be thrown away in a few weeks as most people seem to think," said Erickson. "We are doing something extremely useful that will be very applicable to building problems in Third World countries."
His fierce defence of the papier mache information pavilion that his firm designed for Habitat came after a week of controversy over the project.
A Habitat official announced last week that the pavilion would probably cost more than $600,000 although it had been budgeted at $250,000.Urban Affairs Minister Barney Danson, the minister responsible for Habitat then said he would not approve a $600,000 structure and asked all those involved to attempt to reduce its cost.
Erickson said meetings to redesign the project lasted all weekend and a new, reduced proposal was sent to Habitat officials on Wednesday.
"It's reduced in size to two-thirds of what it was," he said. "And I hope the final cost will be apporximately half of what it was."
Erickson said he expected a decision today from Danson on whether or not the pavilion will go ahead.
However, Habitat associate commissioner-general Hugh Keenleyside said in Vancouver today that no decision will be made until Erickson has supplied him with statements covering various aspects of the new proposal.
He said statements regarding revised cost, technology details, social significance and re-use ideas have been requested from Erickson but have not yet been received.
Originally, the pavilion was designed to cover the entire front plaza of the Georgia Street courthouse. The reduced design has two, much smaller separate pavilions flanking the fountain in front of the courthouse. The middle section of the original design has been replaced by a row of flagpoles.
However, the tent-like papier mache roof of the structure, which is the innovative part of the pavilion, has been retained.
The pavilion is to be used as a public information centre during the UN conference on human settlements (May 31-June 11) and the original plan is that it would be scrapped after the conference.
One of the main features of the project is that 2,000 Lower Mainland school children will help to make the papier mache shells that form the roof units. And the children will also decorate the undersides of the shells with their own designs.
Erickson said the public has not yet been properly informed about the project and that is why the controversy arose.
But, at the same time, he roasted Vancouver residents for their negative attitude towards Habitat.
"I'm fed up with the Vancouver public. Their cynicism and lack of enthusiasm for what this conference is all about." said Erickson. "I don't know what's the matter with Vancouver. It's a lotus land where everyone thinks there is nothing else in the world except this city."
"Everywhere I go in the world, people tell me they are coming to Habitat. The only place in the world where people are not interested in Habitat is Vancouver."
Explaining the work involved in the pavilion, Erickson said his first priority was that it should show how a waste product could be recycled into a minimal form of shelter.
"Since Vancouver is the centre of the paper industry, the idea of using paper became very challenging." he said. "No one thinks of building a house out of paper so I thought the pavilion would be an important statement that something usually discarded could be recycled into something useful."
He said he first thought of making earth moulds for the roof shells out of sand dug up at Spanish Banks.
"It would have been quite feasible to do that, but not in our climate at this time of year." said Erickson.
Finally, the project evolved into school children making the shells out of discarded newspapers, because Erickson wanted to demonstrate that once the moulds had been made, even children could construct the actual shells.
"Each shell is terribly cheap. It costs virtually nothing to make," he said. "The major cost involved is the research and development and now we've done that. It took us four months of work."
Erickson said that now the technology has been developed this building technique can be copied very cheaply by Third World countries.
He also pointed out that much of the cost in the Habitat pavilion was related to the fact that it was so large (12,000 square feet originally) and caused severe engineering problems of stress that had to be overcome. He said his engineers had to use computers to make their stress calculations.
Erickson pointed out that when the roof shells are used to form small structures, the stress problems will not exist.
"The use of discarded newspapers, paper pulp tubes and corrugated cardboard to create this pavilion is especially appropriate now when many Third World countries are searching for innovative ideas and building techniques to solve their housing problems," he said. "The original uses of newspapers and corrugated cardboard are unrelated to buildings and paper pulp tubes have been taken for granted in their limited application in construction."
Erickson said he is sure the building technique used in the pavilion will be a great topic of discussion among the Habitat delegates.
"Canada's reputation is on the line here," he said. "If we'd just put up a tent, the delegates would have gained nothing from it."
Erickson said that after the conference, the pavilion could be left up all summer as a visitor's shelter.
The moulds have great potential for re-use, he said, and already BC Hydro has inquired about using them to make bus shelters.
Erickson said the pavilion should not be judged as a structure with a limited lifespan but as a "prototype mock-up of ideas with unlimited possibilities yet to be fully explored."