Canada’s educational plan in the 1960s was driven by concepts of educating the masses and democratizing education: the goal was to construct an educated national citizen with the aim of human betterment and to prepare a new generation for a future economy. This necessitated the building of modern universities and hiring new faculty: the "edu­-architectural design" (Holert) of the period produced outstanding brutalist architectural campuses and brought forms of radical pedagogy onto the campus. SFU’s iconic Arthur Erickson campus was designed to enable radical, or open pedagogy.

In 1963 Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey submitted their application to design a new campus which would be known as Simon Fraser University. Dr. Gordon Shrum created the competition call, the Chancellor of SFU at the time. Massey and Erickson's design was chosen out of 71 other submissions. The competition was looking for submission of designs for a new university that would be built under two years. The call had a few stipulations such as making it possible to move throughout the university without going outside and that large lecture theatres should be close to each other. The judges unanimously selected Erickson and Massey to lead the architectural team in developing SFU. The four other architects chosen after Erickson and Massey were William R. Rhone and Randle Iredale; Zoltan Kiss; Duncan McNab, Harry Lee, and David Logan; these architects would work under the direction of Erickson and Massey. Most of the design decisions were conceived by Erickson and Massey; however, Shrum sided with Zoltan Kiss in adding accents of wood on the walls to create warmth and also to double the number of white fins along the outside of the school, seen in most photographs of the university. Erickson and Massey entirely designed the Quadrangle, the Main Mall, West Mall and the residential space. These spaces were important to them as it largely formed the university's structure and set the foundational elements in place for further growth to continue. The design was a favourite for the judges because it allowed for the possibility of continued growth.

Erickson and Massey worked within the core themes that the university's faculties would all be connected instead of in separate buildings. There would be covered walkways that students could move freely from one department to the next. This idea was desired to foster and support communication between different departments and between students and faculty. SFU is an exemplary modernist architectural megastructure, yet one which aimed at breaking down the hierarchies of education.

Erickson and Massey chose the initial site because of the vista at the top of the mountain. In addition, the mountain top site allowed there to be a distance from the everyday world, fostering a place of great focus. A reoccurring theme that Erickson brings up often is the desire for the school to be a place of contemplation similar to that of a monastery or cathedral. In this space, one could have a walking meditation or a philosopher's walk. As well, gathering areas with reflection ponds served as a spatial metaphor for knowledge, spaces which are very different than the active "maker spaces" or "social innovation hub" as venture programs of today's campus. The building was intended to be monochromatic in simple greyscale colours with art on the walls acting as a source for colour and change instead of its structure. Erickson related these ideas to Cambridge, where the structural surroundings were not distracting.

SFU's large open spaces, such as the Main Mall and Quadrangle, act as a gathering space for students, and in many ways, this allowed for an area of which Erickson and Massey may have intended - to foster communication. Erickson talked about creating spaces for students to carry on their education outside of the classroom and instead produce areas of gathering where ideas and discussions can be shared. Spaces like the Quadrangle allow for the possibilities of protests and gatherings and is still an active site today of celebration and sometimes protest. Erickson's inspiration and references for SFU include Mont Alban, Pergamum, Acropolis, Mughal city of Fatepur Sikri, terraced hills of Java, hill towns of Italy, Chinese Imperial Temple of Heaven in Beijing, Plaza Mayor Salamanca, Oxbridge, Cambridge, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Bologna and The University of Paris. In an interview about SFU, he said, "we had no faith in the traditional universities and we wanted to realize what we felt was the proper way which was based on the Oxbridge experiment and I guess the only thing was the continuous covered walks between all parts of the university with the climate on the mountain here we felt was absolutely essential." Erickson often references the Oxbridge in his desire to model a university centred around a square where people could live and go to school and walk everywhere, a place of focus. Oxford and Cambridge influenced this idea, and this approach modelled a blending of life and learning in a concentrated space.

Due to the ideas of building a campus that fostered alternative ways of learning and collaborating, as well as multiple protests that became woven with the identity of SFU, the school formed the reputation of being a "radical campus." However, the ideals once dreamed of as the foundation for SFU, quickly dissipated. As an emeritus faculty member, Jerry Zaslove points out in his review of the celebrated book The Radical Campus, published on the occasion of SFU's 40th anniversary, "… soon the questions of university government and the principles of academic freedom, already prickly at the time, became a quagmire that eventually wrecked the honeymoon of an ideal beginning for a utopic, modern university." And while the progressive aspects of the University were blunted, over the 1980s and 1990s the appreciation of the campus faded and its brutalist form was disregarded as cold, anonymous and even depressing. Likewise, the colonial legacy of modernism (in relation to its educational policies) and the fact that SFU spatially occupies unceded Indigenous land throws a shadow on its former utopian project.

Erickson and Massey's design of the school reflects a questioning of how faculties of differing nature can inform and evolve alongside and with each other. The foundation of this design is to produce opportunities for learning beyond the classroom, creating a space of interaction and contemplation. The building is meant to foster one's education both inside and outside of the classroom. However, as stated earlier, these ideals do not always manifest themselves in reality. Collectively we must continue to be critical of how spaces further some ideas and histories while erasing others. For one example, the name of Simon Fraser University refers back to a fur-trader whose actions advanced the agenda of colonization; he is known for "discovering" the Fraser River. These fallacies of discovery and erasure of Indigenous presence ripple throughout this school's foundational development, one which excluded and erased the presence of Indigenous people and the unceded Indigenous lands the school is built on. As SFU continues to be a place of learning and innovation, we must remain critical and committed to action in regards to how true forms of radical change can be accomplished, collectively and across disciplines.

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