RAIC GOLD MEDAL 2015足 BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS
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8 WALKING AND WORKING
Elsa Lam conducts an in-depth interview with Brian MacKay- Lyons, exploring the evolution of his practice.
STEVEN EVANS
LORNE BRIDGEMAN
UNDINE PROHL
BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS
20 AN ARCHITECTURE OF REALITY Juhani Pallasmaa describes how a series of projects on a
farm property in rural Nova Scotia demonstrates the power of Brian MacKay-Lyons’ approach to architecure.
16 ROOTED IN THE VERNACULAR, REACHING 26 A SUSTAINED SEARCH Teachers, mentors, colleagues and peers testify to the FOR ABSTRACTION quality and importance of Brian MacKay-Lyons’ oeuvre. Brian MacKay-Lyons’ iconic house projects demonstrate a
deft negotation between vernacular and abstract forms, according to colleague Christine Macy.
30 TEACHER, MENTOR, PARTNER Brian MacKay-Lyons’ business partner Talbot Sweetapple recalls key encounters together in work and life.
LORNE BRIDGEMAN
A view of the Cliff House (2010) by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. Photograph by Greg Richardson. COVER
THE NATIONAL REVIEW OF DESIGN AND PRACTICE/THE JOURNAL OF RECORD OF ARCHITECTURE CANADA | RAIC
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CANADIAN ARCHITECT
RAIC GOLD MEDAL 2015
VIEWPOINT LEFT A view of RAIC Gold Medal recipient Brian MacKayLyons’ satellite studio in Shobac, his oceanside farm property south of Halifax.
EDITOR ELSA LAM, MRAIC ASSOCIATE EDITOR LESLIE JEN, MRAIC
LORNE BRIDGEMAN
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EDITORIAL ADVISOR IAN CHODIKOFF, OAA, FRAIC CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ANNMARIE ADAMS, MRAIC DOUGLAS MACLEOD, NCARB, MRAIC REGIONAL CORRESPONDENTS HALIFAX CHRISTINE MACY, OAA REGINA BERNARD FLAMAN, SAA MONTREAL DAVID THEODORE CALGARY GRAHAM LIVESEY, MRAIC WINNIPEG LISA LANDRUM, MAA, AIA, MRAIC VANCOUVER ADELE WEDER
BACK TO THE LAND “Architecture is a cultivating instrument, whether you’re rehabilitating a piece of urban fabric or whether you’re clearing land to restore a field in the countryside,” Brian MacKay-Lyons, FRAIC, said in a recent interview. Brian had just been named the RAIC’s 2015 Gold Medal recipient. He spoke to me from Shobac, his farm in Kingsburg, Nova Scotia. Named after Christian Shoubach, to whom the original land grant was made, the property is sited on one of the earliest Acadian settlements from the early 1600s. During our conversation, Brian was at his desk, looking out of a window at a herd of grazing sheep. Over more than 25 years, he has cultivated the fields of Shobac—as well as designing a remarkable series of buildings and architectural pavilions on the land. The word “cultivation” came up repeatedly in our discussion. Brian spoke of using silent buildings to cultivate the cultural landscape. He talked about the ethic of cultivation—“you want to improve things, like a farmer wants to improve the land.” The word “cultivation” is closely related to the word “culture.” Dating back to the 12th century, the French verb cultiver and its noun form culture both refer to the action of tilling the land to grow plants. The kinship remains palpable in Brian’s use of the words. He reminisced about growing up in the Acadian landscape, with its half-native, halfFrench culture; he spoke of the importance of landscape and material culture as part of the essential content of architecture. He echoed a mentor in positing, “all culture derives from the poor”—that to be socially relevant, architecture must be economical and accessible. Rather than high-brow elitest culture experienced with clean white gloves, Brian prefers the type of culture (and architecture) that involves digging your bare toes into the ground. He sometimes draws with a stick in the sand. He has never been afraid to get his hands dirty. Like cultivating a farmer’s field, Brian’s architecture is about evolving a deep, committed
sense of place. Preparing a field for crops is not an act done lightly: it involves removing trees, tearing into the ground, exposing seedlings to the violence of spring storms and baking sun. A building is likewise a serious matter: from its foundations sunk deep into the ground, to the stockpiles of timber and steel studs needed, to the small army of tradespeople involved. Even a house meant to perch lightly on the landscape includes considerable excavation for infrastructure and foundations. It’s a shock to the uninitiated. Over time, farmers and architects become familiar with the sight of raw, upturned earth. The best farmers seek not solely to exploit the land for food, but to ameliorate it. Multi-year cycles of successive planting and grazing, interspersed with fallow periods, allow for the gradual improvement of soil conditions over time. For his efforts, the farmer—and his community— is rewarded with yields of nourishing crops and nourished animals. Few people farm like this anymore, unfortunately. As Michael Pollan documents in The Omnivore’s Dilemna, the vast majority of North American farms—even many organic farms—are large-scale industrial operations that rely on heavy inputs of fertilizer, pesticides and/or migrant labour. Architecture, likewise, has been industrialized—the majority of new homes are houses in the suburbs and condos in the city, on land that’s been cleared, levelled and developed with little regard to the particularities of theMember ter- of rain—let alone the smell of the earth. Is change possible? “We’re in the optimist business, so there’s no point in lamenting anything,” says Brian. His firm takes on at least one inexpensive house under $100,000 each year. His practice also includes quiet buildings integrated into urban and rural contexts, a counterpart to his work published in glossy magazines. Year by year, Shobac gains a boathouse here, a tower there. Gradually, the land improves. The place is cultivated with care.
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Elsa Lam
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JAMES STEEVES
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WALKING AND WORKING BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS BELIEVES THAT TAKING A MODEST, LOCAL APPROACH TO ARCHITECTURE IS MORE RELEVANT THAN EVER IN OUR FAST-PACED, GLOBALIZED WORLD. Brian MacKay-Lyons is the 2015 winner of the RAIC Gold Medal, the highest honour bestowed by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Canadian Architect recently spoke to Brian about his career trajectory, philosophy of practice, and sources of inspiration. Editor Elsa Lam reached him at his farm and satellite office in Kingsburg, Nova Scotia. What made you decide to become an architect? I grew up in a very powerful landscape, and it made me want to work with landscape. I was also fortunate to travel a lot as a child. I remember one day standing in the Roman forum. I was four years old. I was with my brother, and we were trying to reach around a column that was between us to measure it. I remember, clear as day: that was the moment I decided to be an architect. I never really lost that. Can you talk about your experience in architecture school? You had some frustrations through it that seem to have fuelled your architectural practice. I was going to quit architecture school at the end of my first year. Larry Richards, who was a professor there at the time, talked me into sticking with it.
I started the Ghost Lab because of my frustration with architectural education. The conference that we had in 2011 was called “Ideas in Things,” using William Carlos Williams’ quote: “Ideas only in things.” The world of ideas and the world of things in architecture seems, for a long time now, to be moving apart: the head and the hand, the world of practice and the world of architectural education. If someone’s interested in making things, then they’re targeted for trade school. And if someone is not interested in making things, we say that they’re interested in ideas. But ideas without reality are nothing. As Williams says, “Ideas are built on the foundation of the world, not only vapour.” I still feel that way about architectural discourse in general, and I think that digital tools aren’t helping that. Tell me about the origins and evolution of your practice. The day I graduated from my first professional degree at what is now Dalhousie, myself and two colleagues, Larry Richards and Eric Fiss, rented a space and started practicing. It was a company called Networks. Totally naïve. We just jumped right in there—it was really crazy. Like a lot of people, I decided to go back to grad school to do a post-professional degree, partly to preserve my innocence—to not be forced to work
BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS
BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS
in a conventional, soul-destroying office. One way to avoid that is to go to grad school and develop some antibodies to the numbing effect of conventional practice. Of course, if you’re a good student, you get teaching assistantships and you learn that you value teaching. I’ve always taught as a result of that experience. I went to grad school at UCLA in Los Angeles and came back via Italy. I worked with Giancarlo De Carlo in Siena, and started a practice right away when I came back to Halifax. I took a teaching job at Dalhousie on January 3, 1983, and started practicing at the same time, until I found it impossible to do both. Then I cut back my teaching to half-time. One great thing about teaching is you get to rob the cradle. You get to work with young people that are your students, and you know who they are as human beings. The best student that came through the school, in my whole time teaching anywhere, was Talbot Sweetapple. He was from Gander, Newfoundland. He worked for KPMB Architects in Toronto and he worked for Shin Takamatsu in Berlin, then he came back and began working for me. One day he announced, “My five-year plan is that I’m going to become your partner.” Which is exactly what happened. At that point, the practice grew a little. The single practitioner, with a small group of young grads and students around, had to grow into something that made room for Talbot and his ambition to do public buildings as well as houses. We built ourselves a new office, our current office. It’s funny that architects don’t work in spaces of their own making. If you need a place to work, why don’t you build one? The current space is a 20-person office on Gottingen Street in Halifax. Then there’s a satellite office in Kingsburg. In both cases, it was architect as developer, to enable it. So, on Gottingen Street we did four freehold lots and made 10 units out of
OPPOSITE MacKay-Lyons converted a gas station into his firm’s first office in Halifax, completing the site with four townhomes. ABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT MacKay-Lyons with his young children and mentor Charles Moore; after graduating from Dalhousie and UCLA, he worked in Siena for Giancarlo De Carlo; a sketch from travels through Italy.
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it. In Kingsburg we built the Ghost cabins. On Falkland Street, where our house in the city is now, we built our office in an old gas station. We built four townhouses next to it to pay for it in 1990. If you need something, why not go and make it? Of course, everyone says “you’re crazy”—and then it becomes the smartest thing you ever did because real estate is better than architecture, financially. Right now, at Shobac, we’re building an intern’s cabin. This summer we start our first graduate architect/intern living in this metal shed that we’re building as part of an ongoing research in the minimum house. It’s making the practice more sustainable, in the sense that I can spend more time at the farm and have a viable staff here. For the house practice, that’s the brand, this kind of end-of-the-earth address. I want to talk about the relation between your house practice and public projects. I was fascinated to learn that your very first projects were urban. It seems like there is a interesting cross-pollination between urban and rural projects, and also between the scales of the projects. If we don’t have much time to have a conversation, we say that Talbot manages the public-scale stuff and I manage the residential-scale stuff. That’s a really simplified view of it. We’re always looking for that link between the two scales. There may be two scales but there’s only one body of work. The things that link them are the content: we talk about landscape, climate and material culture as the elements of place. Landscape is very powerful. When you get to cities and a larger scale, the material culture aspects may be more difficult to establish, but the landscape part isn’t. The word landscape is really synonymous with the idea of environment, and an attitude towards sustainability and economy. But more importantly, it’s a kind of urbanism. I did my graduate work in urban design and worked with Giancarlo De Carlo and Barton Myers—people who were real urbanists—and that sat well with my landscape perspective. I would describe all of my houses in the countryside as proto-urban. They get their energy from a kind of urbanist attitude. They’re not isolated objects in the landscape, they’re context-derived. The Campo in Siena, where I used to live, was a field—and it’s the best urban space in the world,
GREG RICHARDSON
JAMES STEEVES
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but campo means field. Whether you’re making a barnyard, a square in a city, or a quadrangle in a university, it’s really the same thing, in my view. Half of the design of a house, for us, is getting to the front door, being taken through the landscape on a journey. If you develop the eyes to see context—whether it be climate, landform, or cultural history of a settlement—you can draw energy from those things that are basically already there and free for the taking. I was having a discussion with Tod Williams, and he said, “That’s the contribution of your practice: that research into using the energy of the world, of the landscape.” It enables us to make very inexpensive buildings because the content comes for free. You can get a lot of architecture out of that, and you don’t have to invent it. It’s already there, you just have to have the eyes to see it. De Carlo called it “reading the context.” Charles Moore called it “listening.” Listening, reading, seeing: it’s a cultivated intuition in our work. All of our work is unified by that. We’re doing a Beaverbrook Art Gallery extension in New Brunswick on the Saint John River. We’re on the river, we’re across from the legislature, we’re next to a beautiful park. So if you just take those into your project, you’re already almost half done. It’s an analogous process to walking the land with a house client. Exactly the same thing, I think. On a bad day, we say: how are we going to resolve the contradiction between these two scales, between urban and rural things? I resist that, because I don’t think there’s a problem. Architecture is a cultivating instrument, whether you’re rehabilitating a piece of urban fabric or whether you’re clearing land to restore a field in the countryside. It leads into a question about the fascination your practice has with “zero”: the minimum house, the zero detail. It’s tied in to the idea of doing less with architecture, to do more with what’s already there. Could you speak more about this idea and where it is leading? I gave a lecture in San Francisco and someone asked me after the talk, “What do you want to be doing in the future that you’re not already doing?” From a lifestyle point of view, I wouldn’t want to change anything. From an architectural point of view, I told that person that I would like to be able to
GREG RICHARDSON OPPOSITE TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT Leahey #1 House (1993) is a linear vacation home designed to expand in the landscape, incorporating a guest house for extended family, and finally converting into a permanent retirement home; intended as a repeatable prototype, Cliff House (2010) is a modest steelframed cabin perched precariously on a bedrock cliff; Two Hulls House (2011) is a full-time home for a family of four, consisting of two pavilions—one for day and one for night—that look out to sea like a pair of binoculars.
make buildings that are more and more silent, but that had more to say. There’s an idea of economy of means—it’s a universal value system. Historian Robert McCarter is writing a book on our practice. His working title is “Economy as Ethic.” Essy Baniassad said to me one time, “All culture derives from the poor.” As a Democrat, I think that’s absolutely right. Bumpkins like me want to believe that you don’t have to be born with a silver spoon and Ivy League-educated to be an architect. The idea that all culture derives from the poor is about accessibility. To be socially relevant, architecture must be accessible, it must be affordable. I looked at people like Frank Lloyd Wright: he did Fallingwater but he also did the Usonian houses. You look at Ferdinand Porsche. He designed the Porsche but he also designed the Volkswagen. There’s a democratic ethic in this idea of economy. There’s also an aesthetic idea: if you’re a mathematician, there’s an aesthetic idea about the most economical formula, like E=mc2. In every field, whether you’re in business or science, or a researcher, this idea of economy of means is a primary idea. The other word that we use, connected to economy, is elegance. I like to say that I want to have the elegance of a peasant. When we look at sustainability—which is a really overused branding word—you look at vernacular building traditions. The vernacular is what you do when you can’t afford to get it wrong. So that sense of immediacy that comes from modest means is a great source of strength for us. You put this into action with your practice of taking on at least one house that’s under $100,000 each year. I’m looking out my window, and this intern house that’s under construction is extremely modest, and it will be a great project because it’s modest and in a certain way traditional—and its opposite. It’s super-modern and supertraditional at the same time. It’s easy here in this landscape, because I know it so well, I know where all the sources of richness are—I can pull it out of the land and sky, the views. It’s a great place to learn to be an architect.
So we do these cheap houses, but I don’t want to say that too loud, because it’s hard to make your living doing that. Years ago, I thought I had figured out a way to make a living developing software for an internetbased design tool that would be able to produce something like the Usonian houses. It was going so interestingly well that I decided not to do it, because it was too interesting. It would have distorted my career. So we didn’t follow it up. It was a great exercise to go down that road. But you’ve only got one life, you’ve got to figure out how you want to live it. I’m curious how you see these categories—the vernacular and the modern—whether they’re useful or a distraction for thinking about your work. All of these dualities are a sophomoric intellectual trap to see the world in terms of opposites. We’re just showing the frailty of our binary brains. In a way, it’s not useful at all. But in a way, it’s also something to resolve, like in a Hegelian equation. It’s fun to learn from tradition, it’s part of reading the landscape—you start maybe with a vernacular archetype, and you contextualize it to a specific place and a specific time. I love the idea—and maybe the work is going more like this—when you first look at it, you don’t even see it, it’ll be invisible. But as you get close, and by the time you get inside, it becomes evident that it’s extremely modern. Pushing against tradition like that— setting it up, then deconstructing or making something modern with it— that’s interesting to us right now. We have a whole side of our practice that’s invisible architecture—you’re in a village, you add something, and no one notices it. Until you look really closely and see, oh, this is different. There’s an ethic that’s about cultivating the cultural landscape and not just standing out against it—adding to the cohesion in the world rather than the cult of the compelling object, as Peter Buchanan calls it. That’s not very hip or fashionable. We have these predilections, like making really, really dull architecture—that’s bad for
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business. And in a way, making buildings invisible is bad for getting noticed—or it’s a great way to do everything.
tural sustainability. That’s a great source of content and goes to the heart of sustainability in the environmental sense.
There are also elements of the traditional and modern in your processes: for instance, taking in an intern in a master builder/apprentice tradition, or working with builders and their local expertise— whether it’s the shingler in Atlantic Canada or the bricklayers in Bangledesh. It’s part of the whole sustainability discussion. When it is taken seriously, it’s usually taken technically rather than culturally. There’s a kind of sustainability that comes with using local materials and practices that’s a cul-
I’m curious how you think about typology in your work. There’s typology and then there’s archetype forms. In the École des Beaux Arts, they were very clear in teaching people to make good buildings using certain recognized types of approaches, and that produced great cities. At the very least, we have to do that. If you’ve got a model in mind, you can’t totally fuck up. The model is there to help you, like scaffolding. I think the higher ambition is to get to that archetypal level, with projects where it’s not just the type, it’s one of the fundamental ones—the ones that
DAN HERLJEVIC PAUL TOMAN CLOCKWISE FROM OPPOSITE The current office on Gottingen Street; completed in association with RDH Architects, the ARC building (2003) formalizes a pedestrian spine and frames a new courtyard, helping to urbanize the University of Toronto’s suburban Scarborough campus; in 1993, MacKayLyons’ firm built the first phase of an addition to the Dalhousie University Faculty of Architecture in the rear courtyard of the existing building.
are a deep, universal human power. So that’s what we’re trying for. It’s an ambition. To some extent, we’re always failing. Remember Laurie Anderson? She had a song she did called Walking. She said, “Walking is a combination of falling and stopping yourself from falling.” You keep going, and keep adjusting. It’s like target practice. If you’re disciplined enough, and don’t take any wooden nickels along the way, you might end up somewhere. You might hit the archetypal thing.
I wanted to ask about the sources of inspiration in your work—we’ve talked a little about travel, and clearly philosophers and other kinds of artists are very much part of your way of seeing the world. Yes, of course. I had to speak at this innovation conference a few months ago, and I stood up there and said, “I think innovation is overrated.” It’s certainly nothing you can set out to do. It’s more exciting to me to rediscover something others have understood, than to imagine I invented it. When
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IN
WILL GREEN
To bring us a bit closer to the present reality, perhaps you could speak a bit about the projects you’re working on currently that you’re most excited about. The projects are very diverse in the office, which is a great thing. We’re making this house that I’m looking out at right now, this little house like two fishing shacks talking to one another. It’s really inexpensive, it’s rural, it’s small, it’s modest. We’re making a Corten wall in the side of a mountain—a 160-foot-long Corten exterior wall in the side of a mountain for a guy to live behind with his family. He’s a helicopter mechanic who builds windmill farms. So you’ve got these giant windmills all over the landscape around it. How cool is that? We’re also working on this art gallery in New Brunswick, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery extension. It’s a great honour to be doing a public institution on such a revered site, with such a great art collection, with a terrific client group—it’s too good to be true. But those projects have long, long, long roots. In a way, you start working toward those projects when you’re 20 years old. Hopefully, they happen before you croak.
STEVEN EVANS
In one of your books, you write that the quality by which you execute your first projects really determines the practice. You are what you eat. I’m very skeptical when people say, “When I make a lot of money, I’m going to start being a good architect,” or “When I retire, I’m going to teach.” You hear these things. But life is not a rehearsal—you just go at it. I decided I was going to be an architect when I was 4, I had my own practice at 23. What are we waiting for? This is it. I can’t imagine that any of this would have happened without my wife, Marilyn. She’s been so unconditionally supportive, and in an active way. The day we were married, her mother made her swear on a Bible that she would never stand in the way of my art. That’s really important. Brigitte Shim and I talk about work-life balance and family, and working out how it can all be synergistic. For both of us, that’s really important. It’s primary— you’ve got to be happy to make good work. In the end, so much of this is about relationships. All the way through—exactly. Starting at home, and ending with bailing labourers out of jail to come to the construction site. It’s a big social art, architecture.
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ABOVE, TOP TO BOTTOM Muir Craig Cottage (2013) comprises a group of minimalist buildings with gabled roofs; the firm designed the Canadian Chancery and Official Residence in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2009; a rendering of the intern’s cabin currently under construction at Shobac.
you rediscover something that others have figured out, you get a sense that they must be good ideas, because they have currency beyond your discipline. You have friends, you’ve got allies—you’re not alone. You have to be interested and curious in the world and in what other disciplines are doing. Yousuf Karsh used to make the point that the trick in his world was to retain a childlike curiosity into old age. It means being open to being turned on to things that other people are doing and making. I’ve always been interested in visual art, sure. Intellectually, you can be inspired by all these other fields. There’s the unity of knowledge, but there’s only one world. We’re all just picking away at the edges of it, together.
What is your hope for the future of architecture? Part of the reason I think that’s a difficult question to answer for an artist of any kind is that we don’t really do anything to change the world, we don’t really do anything for posterity. You just do it for the doing of it. And there’s no guarantee that anybody is going to even notice. But if you’re an artist, that doesn’t matter. You want to leave the world better than you found it, which is how I justify doing silent buildings a lot of the time. The fabric that they make cultivates the world and makes it better. So cultivation is an ethic—you want to improve things, like a farmer wants to improve the land. Glenn Murcutt was asked in an interview, “What is the relevance of all these primitive huts and beautiful sites, these little jewels that you do?” He said, “You know, if you do some small thing very well, it can change the world.” Especially in the globalized world that we’re in. Like Frances Kéré’s school in his village in Burkino Faso, it won the Aga Khan prize; it changes the world with that. But it’s not that you set out to change the world—you set out to do something that’s right for that village. Something useful. Make a contribution in some small way. It’s very pretentious to assume we know what’s best for everybody. No big manifesto. Just walking.
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JAMES STEEVES
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ROOTED IN THE VERNACULAR, REACHING FOR ABSTRACTION IN HIS HOUSE PROJECTS, BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS DEFTLY NAVIGATES BETWEEN THE TWIN POLES OF TRADITION AND MODERNITY. TEXT
Christine Macy
When I first came to Nova Scotia in 1993, Brian MacKay-Lyons had completed a number of houses. Many of them were informed by the traditional urban house types of Halifax’s North End, where he lives. A few years later, I was on a Canada Council jury when he submitted House on the Nova Scotia Coast No. 12 (1997) for a Governor General’s Medal. What this jury of eminent architects said about the work fascinated me. The entries were anonymous, and at first they weren’t sure if it was Brian’s project. The elegant graphics of the presentation suggested it might be—but they felt the design was...a little more “out there” than they would have expected from him. So they turned to me
and asked if I knew who, in Nova Scotia, might have designed this project. In the conversation that followed, it was clear these peers valued abstract over iconographic work, and happily, House No. 12 fell into this camp. After that experience—perhaps I was paying more attention—I noticed that Brian MacKay-Lyons was moving towards purer, less iconographic geometries in House No. 22 (1998) and the Howard House (1999). This appeared to be a developmental trajectory: one beginning with an exploration into the potentialities of the vernacular followed by a conscious movement towards a more Modernist language. What intrigued me
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about this shift was that Brian still talked about the work as a Nova Scotia vernacular language—not in its form, but in its construction, using tight envelopes and shingled cladding. And he continued to position his work in relation to a settled landscape, although he was looking less at houses and more at sheds and barns. When I asked Brian about whether he consciously oriented his work away from the vernacular and towards abstraction, he said, “it’s true and not true.” What happens instead, he explained, is that vernacular forms get transformed in every project and at every different scale. “It just keeps recycling...you keep coming back to the well. The vernacular is the well.” People are drawn to the work of Brian MacKay-Lyons by its promise of dipping into this well of a simpler life—a more meaningful and authentic life that’s represented in the idea of craft and tradition. Through his work, they can feel continuity with the past and make sense of their place in the world. People outside of Nova Scotia are often interested in Brian’s work because of its abstraction—in Brian’s view, this gives his work currency. Abstraction allows people to connect with a finely crafted home that belongs to a place, while avoiding the taint of kitsch. To use the language of architectural theory, the work exemplifies “Critical Regionalism”. 1 One great appeal of Brian MacKay-Lyons’ houses is the counterpoint they present: the purity of abstract geometry juxtaposed against an evocative and historically resonant cultural landscape. It’s the juxtaposition of the two that generates the charge. Floating in clear ethereal
OPPOSITE The Howard House (1999) was conceived as inhabitable land art for an art historian and his family. ABOVE, TOP TO BOTTOM House 22 (1998) includes two lantern-like pavilions, oriented on a north-south axis across a wetland; a spa was added in 2009, designed to evoke a monolithic wood block.
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sunlit space with floor-to-ceiling glass, hovering above a spectacular nature. The abstract forms are not platonic solids, but archetypes of enclosure derived from vernacular forms. In his most recent formulation, Brian describes them as “gables, lean-tos, wedges and boxes,” adding, “I’ve always been interested in things that are archetypal.” The archetype, for Brian, is an architectural strategy that mediates between tradition and abstraction. After all, what is an archetype, but an abstraction of a tradition? Between tradition and modernity, place and abstraction, local and global, Brian’s work resonates with this tension between two idealized states. Unlike much contemporary architecture, it is rooted in a place, but he also wants it to be modern. As he puts it, “I always felt the need to be modern. The person who said this best is Octavio Paz. ‘Taken alone, tradition stagnates and modernity vaporizes. Taken together, modernity breathes life into tradition, and tradition responds by providing depth and gravity.’” 2 That creates a kind of resonance that people respond to. Participatory Design Back in 2008, I interviewed Brian about his office’s approach to participatory design for university buildings. 3 Inspired by Giancarlo De Carlo and Charles Moore, his interest in participatory design is about “social agency and coming up with spaces that are good for community.” But in private houses, there is another dynamic that also involves participatory design, one that establishes an emotional affiliation between owner and architect and a sense of a shared adventure. Brian is genuinely curious about his clients. “I find it so fun to meet these people,” he says. “You’re not just with your own ideas—you’ve got these really interesting characters. In my case, it’s a real interest in learning. I had a learning disability as a child, and I could only learn by asking questions. That was great—it prepared me for architecture. So I ask people questions and try to find out what they’re all about. That is the grist for the intellectual journey.” This journey is an experience shared by owner and architect. For Brian, it leads towards abstraction and not imagery, towards architectural ideas and not personal taste: “I take them away from taste.” Working in Nova Scotia After completing his graduate studies in Los Angeles, Brian MacKayLyons moved back to Nova Scotia to practice architecture, and he has been anchored there ever since. Atlantic Canada has been an inspiring context for the creation of his work. He recalls, “When I was in Los Angeles, the first thing Larry Halprin asked us to do was to draw a cognitive map of where we came from.
I drew a landscape that I grew up in, where my ancestors have lived on one hilltop for 5,000 years. The house I grew up in was Charles La Tour’s house—he was the Governor of Acadia who was my ancestor. That was a permanent Mi’kmaq village, and he went and just moved in. So, I got my Métis card. That’s where I grew up: in that house, on that hilltop, in that Acadian landscape, that marshland. Anyway, I drew it for him. Larry Halprin said he’d never seen anybody with a deeper understanding of where they came from. That’s why I didn’t stay in Los Angeles. I wasn’t going to ever stay there, because of the pull back.” Reception of his work in Atlantic Canada, he says, “has been spotty.” Is there a market for the beautiful, well-crafted building in a culture that values thrift, economy and practicality? On reflection, Brian finds that people who best understand and appreciate his work in Atlantic Canada are craftsmen, artists, arts patrons, and passionate advocates of good design. Of the builders, he says that craftsmen and carpenters “really get it.” He adds, “Because our work is essentially rational, they don’t have any trouble with it.” In its single-minded pursuit of architectural ideas beautifully realized, Brian says that his firm’s work has a relationship to art and artists: “It seems to be almost part of that discourse.” In his view, the best clients for his practice are people who are drawn to Atlantic Canada and those from the Maritimes “who go out in the world, and then move back... they’ve got the combination of worldliness and also the local material culture and appreciation for simplicity.” As Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning at Dalhousie University, where Brian has taught for over 30 years, I appreciate that he feels that “being part of the school is another way of being engaged in a world that’s part of abstraction—a place that’s more interested in art and architecture than [people] on the street are.” A school of architecture is not only a place where the craft of design is learned and ideas are passed on, it is a place where architectural ideas are debated and developed. We are very fortunate to have Brian MacKay-Lyons contributing to this discourse at Dalhousie. Christine Macy is Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning at Dalhousie University. 1 Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance” in The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay Press, 1983. 2 Octavio Paz, Nobel lecture, 1990. 3 Christine Macy, “Participatory design on campus: three recent university buildings by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects” in Canadian Architect, July 2008.
GREG RICHARDSON GREG RICHARDSON UNDINE PROUL
GREG RICHARDSON OPPOSITE Designed for the twin brother of a previous client, Leahey #2 House (2009) borrows the narrow, gabled roof forms of local Scottish barns. The four volumes frame a series of courtyards with unique microclimates. ABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Martin-Lancaster House (2010) is a study in material restraint, with cedar-shingled walls and roofs that respond well to the local marine climate; the muscular Bridge House (2011) spans between two bedrock outcrops parallel to the sea; the shed-like Danielson Cottage (2005) includes an uninsulated living and deck space that can be closed for the winter; Sliding House (2008) is located along a 250-year-old stone wall, angling down a hillside towards a lake.
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AN ARCHITECTURE OF REALITY BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS’ NOVA SCOTIA FARM PROPERTY IS AN ARCHITECTURAL VILLAGE COMPRISED LARGELY OF PROJECTS CREATED THROUGH 13 GHOST DESIGN-BUILD WORKSHOPS. IT IS ALSO A POTENT TOUCHSTONE, ARGUES JUHANI PALLASMAA, FOR ARCHITECTURE GROUNDED IN REALITY RATHER THAN FANTASY. TEXT
Juhani Pallasmaa
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Buildings designed by Brian MacKay-Lyons are carefully placed throughout his farm property in Upper Kingsburg, Nova Scotia. The architect has also designed several homes for clients in the immediate area. ABOVE A view of the restored heritage Troop Barn (2009), reconstructed Chebogue Schoolhouse (2014), and one of the Ghost 6 Towers (2004). OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT Built during Ghost 8, Brian MacKay-Lyons’ satellite studio is situated between a grassy ridge and a small cliff that drops down the to LaHave River estuary; for Ghost 6, participants built a pair of towers that frame views out towards the water.
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Vernacular architecture condenses the acquired wisdom of ageless traditions into simple and concrete choices and practices. The first decision is always the choice of the location for the structure in relation to the landscape, existing man-made contexts, histories and myths, sun, winds, soil and microclimate. The scale and proportions of the structures arise naturally from the materials and the body dimensions of the builder himself. Instead of seeking to express any personal or unique ideas, the vernacular builder aspires to follow accepted traditions, adapting them to the specific demands of the situation. Aesthetic qualities are not a separate—or even a conscious—aspiration, but a consequence of reasonable and balanced practical decisions. According to anthropological sources, the Balinese do not have a word for “beauty,” yet their constructions are aesthetically pleasing, because, as one local puts it, “we do everything as well as we can.” The objectification of beauty and instrumentalization of aesthetics: are these not the cardinal sins of the architecture of our time? “Beauty” is increasingly becoming an independent and self-sufficient product in our obsessive culture of endless consumption. But, as the poet Joseph Brodsky remarks, “Beauty can’t be targeted…it is always a by-product of other, often very ordinary pursuits.” 1 In the modern era, these natural motives and sources of internal coherence have been lost, and architecture has turned into a conscious, intellectualized and aestheticized practice. The loss of the inherent integrity of construction tends to result in a sense of arbitrariness, fragmentation, aes-
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thetic exaggeration, and finally, total absurdity. The “natural philosophy of architecture,” the tacit wisdom of building, has been sadly replaced by alienated, intellectualized, verbalized and calculated practices. When I think of the architecture of Brian MacKay-Lyons, especially the Ghost project site at Shobac (his farm in Upper Kingsburg, Nova Scotia), pleasurable images of buildings—arising from and reflective of the place and its traditions—rise to my eyes. These buildings are placed to emphasize or complete the dynamics, movements and rhythms of the landscape. Each building becomes a part of its place, and it contributes to the coherence and atmosphere of the entity. The buildings appear as if they had been extruded by the land itself, like mushrooms. They complete the site by adding missing moves, accents and gestures. These simple buildings are intelligent, efficient, clear and proud, but at the same time they posses the relaxed naturalness and humility of traditional constructions. Regardless of their inherent utility and overall rationality, they evoke a sense of ritual and meaning beyond their practical purposes. The structural systems of these clear-minded buildings are wellorganized, the materiality appropriate for the place and task, and the scale and proportions pleasantly unselfconscious. Reason and moderation take on a poetic air. The Ghost site, with its structures that have been added gradually, is a somewhat mysterious settlement: simultaneously a farm and an institution of practical research and learning, a place for dwelling and a collection of different workspaces. First of all, it is an example of how to deal respectfully with land and landscape, and their layers of meaning and secrets. As with all deeply rooted settings, the Ghost site has its histories, legends and stories. The entity creates a place of distinct meanings, which makes us see the beauty of the unique natural setting, the monumental encounter of
land and water. It revitalizes the deep heritage of the region, and makes one believe in the continuum and refinement of culture. In Shobac, I find myself thinking of ancient life in Nova Scotia, human fates on its shorelines and in its forests. In addition to articulating our experiences of space and place, this setting connects us with time—natural and cultural duration—and that also makes us confident of the availability of time in the future. Here one dwells in time as much as in space and place. Thirteen successive Ghost Construction Laboratories turned the farm repeatedly into an international meeting point and an arena for intense discussions on the future of human habitat. The combination of old and new structures, large and intimate spaces, created a flexible and joyful setting for the differing situations of the events: from intimate conversations to the memorable final dance of the 13th gathering in the octagonal Troop Barn, which also served perfectly as the lecture hall. The setting yielded a stimulating and focusing atmosphere for the events, and participation in the construction processes resulted in shared feelings of responsibility, solidarity and togetherness. Finally, the active and devoted participation of Brian’s entire family and office have turned the international group into an emotionally tied extended family. The Ghost buildings are architecturally of their time, but they do not struggle to be extraordinary. “No real writer ever tried to be contemporary,” Jorge Luis Borges tells us. 2 They combine rationality and emotion, and turn reason and restraint into the poetry of everyday life. For me, this is the highest praise for a piece of architecture: to turn lived reality and normality into something mysteriously comfortable, poetic and healing. “What is there more mysterious than clarity?” 3 poet Paul Valéry asks, whereas John Hejduk (“Big John”—the legendary soul of the Cooper Union School) used to speak of the “labyrinthine clarity” of Franz Kafka’s stories.
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ABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP The Troop Barn was one of two remaining octagonal barns in Nova Scotia when it was deregistered as a heritage building in 2008. and for Ghost 11, a team led by Brian MacKay-Lyons and Robert Cram disassembled, transported and reconstructed the barn in Upper Kingsburg; a boathouse built during Ghost 10 in 2008 includes a roof deck with panoramic views; a lean-to built for Ghost 5 in 2003 sits on a cliffside site. OPPOSITE A series of cabins oriented in relation to sun, wind and water were built in 2005 as part of the Ghost 7 workshop.
The rural buildings of MacKay-Lyons and his office, in general, project a distinct Nordic atmosphere, perhaps most closely evoking Norwegian architecture. This character seems to be a consequence of a similar landscape and climate—perhaps also of parallel social characteristics and histories—more than of any conscious stylistic inspiration. Since the late 1950s, I have felt a special affinity between Canadian and Finnish architecture, and that could well result from the countries’ vast forests with their silences and deep shadows, as well as the stubborn individuality and self-sufficiency of the people in lands of vast dimensions. The nearness of elegant continental European traditions, dating all the way back to the Italian Renaissance, lent refinement to Nordic architecture—characteristics that have appeared more recently in Canadian architecture. In the architecture of MacKay-Lyons, the reality of the ocean can also be felt, in addition to the echoes of the farming land. When I think of his work, my thoughts tend to be directed to the wise writings of two American farmer-poets, Robert Frost and Wendell Berry. Farming, gardening, fishing and construction are inherently poetic human occupations. There are two kinds of poetry: an urban intellectual poetry that deals with the
world of ideas, cultural interactions and histories, and a poetry of the land that articulates meanings and experiences of nature, life and solitude. I believe that there is a similar polarity in architecture, too. The town and the forest project two entirely different spatial and formal worlds, which are reflected in the contrasting urban and forest geometries and atmospheres, respectively. I have argued that Nordic architecture at large, and especially building in Finland, arises from the spatial, rhythmic and sensory qualities of the forest. Alvar Aalto’s architecture, rich in forms, textures, materials and tactile qualities, is the prime example of this forest architecture. Canadian architecture may also reflect a similar deep experiential ground. The thinking of MacKay-Lyons is sharp, realistic and nuanced, and well-grounded in his knowledge of history, literature and art. The sketches and conceptual schemes of his projects make their point clearly and convincingly. His drawings reflect the same matter-of-fact attitude as his words. In our era, which values fantasy and uniqueness, this sense of grounded realism is important. For some time, I have been fascinated by Alvar Aalto’s confession: “Realism usually provides the strongest stimulus for my imagination.” 4 Judging by the formal and semantic complexities of
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his architecture, one would have expected him to support an architecture of fantasy. I am also personally grateful for the advice of my professor and mentor Aulis Blomstedt (who was Aalto’s counterpart in the Finnish architectural discourse from the late 1950s until the 1970s): “The most important talent for an architect is not the skill of fantasizing spaces and forms, but the capacity to imagine human situations.” 5 I find myself increasingly supporting an architecture that arises from lived reality, instead of the fantasy architecture so popular today. In my view, we can enter the world of imagination and dream only through the real. Author J.G. Ballard makes a significant comment in the foreword to his best-selling novel Crash. He argues that the task of literature used to be the creation of fiction, but as we live in fiction in today’s world, the task of literature has curiously reversed: “today, literature needs to re-create reality.” 6 In my view, this comment applies precisely to today’s architecture. The fantasy world of today’s architecture needs to be directed back to real existential concerns. The architecture of reality arises from location, function and technique, the recognition of human historicity and the history of architecture itself, as well as the realities of human behaviour, interactions and emotions. This, I believe, is the ground of the “natural philosophy of architecture” that may oppose today’s fabricated intellectuality and the aestheticization of the architectural image. I place Brian MacKay-Lyons in the category of the responsible architects, who are determined to defend and protect the sanity of the human being and culture. And the sanity of
architecture, I must add. The great task of architecture is to enable us to dwell in this world with dignity. As we are increasingly becoming alienated travellers in an alien land, architecture’s task in creating a domicile for us is increasingly crucial. It is clear that aesthetic aspirations are a crucial part of the realist position as well. As philosopher Karsten Harries suggests, “The experience of beauty of the environment promises a genuine homecoming.” 7 Finnish architect and professor Juhani Pallasmaa is the former dean of the Helsinki University of Technology.
Joseph Brodsky, Watermark. Penguin Books, 1992, p. 70. Luis Borges, On Writing. The Eco Press, 1994, p. 53. 3 Paul Valéry, ”Eupalinos or the Architect” in Dialogues. Pantheon Books, 1956, p. 107. 4 Alvar Aalto, ”Interview for Finnish Television, July 1977” in Alvar Aalto in His Own Words. Otava Publishing Company, 1997, p. 74. 5 Aulis Blomstedt (1906-79), from a lecture in the early 1960s at the Helsinki University of Technology. 6 J.G. Ballard, foreword to Crash—Kolari. Loki-Kirjat, 1996, p. 8. 7 Karsten Harries, ”Transcending Aesthetics: Architecture and the Sacred” from a lecture at the Transcending Architecture—Aesthetics and Ethics of the Numinous conference at the Catholic University of America, Washington DC, October 7-8, 2011. 1
2 Jorge
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clear to me, he had fallen out of favour with the proponents of various Late Modernist styles that ruled the school. Fortunately, one of Brian’s admirable traits is determination, and he was able to prevail, producing rigorous, memorable student projects. Brian’s interest in cultural grounding was evident, extending back to his roots in the Nova Scotia village of Arcadia. He was proud of his heritage and the simple, vernacular buildings that he knew so well. As a student in the ’70s, he was already a minimalist and drawn to abstraction, characteristics that evolved, in part, from his comfort with the reductive yet bold buildings and landscapes of Nova Scotia. He knew where he was from and was not afraid of it. In 1977, I organized a study-abroad semester in China and Japan, and Brian was among the most enthusiastic participants. In China, he studied traditional and vernacular gates framing entry into villages and communes. His interpretive, speculative drawings based on the gates were wonderful—a prophecy of his emerging focus on “the local.” Even then, 38 years ago, he showed the marks of an emerging, thoughtful critical regionalist. Brian MacKay-Lyons and his firm have delivered architecture of the highest order, recognized internationally through significant awards, publications and exhibitions. It is fitting that Brian is now receiving the RAIC Gold Medal. Indeed, I am proud to have been a small part of his extraordinary evolution.
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A SUSTAINED SEARCH TEACHERS, MENTORS, COLLEAGUES AND PEERS TESTIFY TO THE IMPACT AND RELEVANCE OF BRIAN MACKAY-LYONS’ WORK. Larry Wayne Richards, FRAIC When I first saw Brian’s work in 1975, it immediately struck me as original, distinctive and conceptually strong. I had arrived in Halifax as a young architecture professor at Nova Scotia Technical College, and Brian was one of my students. Although his talent and promise were
Essy Baniassad Brian MacKay-Lyons’ designs display a restrained and sustained search, through architecture, for understanding of the creative process as a source of purpose in individual human life and in collective human culture. The result is a body of work which is exceptional in its simultaneous union of immediacy and abstraction. It achieves freedom from immediate functions and material dictates, while accommodating both. His designs possess qualities that are embedded in exceptional works in history, or understated in lasting vernacular traditions of barns and boats that reside deep in the memories of this child of the Acadian Maritimes. This is a well-earned Gold Medal and will do much to bring Brian’s work the right level of attention in the architectural community—particularly the schools of architecture. Barton Myers, FAIA Canada, you owe me big! In a telephone call from Brian back in the early ’80s, I said “no” to Brian’s request to come back to California and join me in LA. Appreciating his frustration with the Maritime economy, I still recommended that he stay, have patience, and that his time would come. With his roots, love of place and talent, Brian would become the Maritimes’ great regional architect. With an M.Arch from UCLA and an apprenticeship with the late Charles Moore, Brian responded well to Moore’s early California vernacular regionalism (for example, Sea Ranch) and later developed an affinity with Glenn Murcutt’s late Australian agrarian architecture as well. However, Brian has moved on to making his own very special Nova Scotian modern regionalism, linking past, present and future with an architecture that is direct, honest, elegant, timely and spiritual—that immeasurable quality that elevates “buildings” to “architecture.” So Canadian. My congratulations, Brian, for a well-deserved Gold Medal. Glenn Murcutt, AO, Hon. FAIA Brian and Marilyn MacKay-Lyons visited me in Sydney in 1987. Since then, we’ve met many times in Canada and the United States. 2001 was
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Patricia Patkau, CM, FRAIC, Hon. FAIA Brian has made a significant career in the province that he loves. He speaks about the land where his ancestors have lived for centuries, and you recognize an attachment to place that is heartfelt and enduring. His search for a contemporary yet regional architecture offers us an architecture of connection, an architecture about community, and an architecture deeply embedded in the cultural landscapes in which he builds. His is a firm and resolute regionalism that views the past with fresh eyes— eyes that extend and explore what you sense is, for him, the unfinished work of his region. It is work of great depth. Brian has built a remarkable body of work with his single-family houses scattered over the Nova Scotia landscape. These houses are mostly modest houses, houses careful in their use of resources, houses with beautiful plans; rigorous yet tempered by the casualness of life on the Nova Scotia terrain. Many of the houses seem to be type variants, houses where you can see the architect improving on work that has gone before, where you observe an architect who is clearly disinterested in novelty and newness. While working locally, Brian has had a truly global presence. He is deeply grounded in a specific place yet, simultaneously, a peripatetic global traveller who enjoys speaking to and engaging with a broad cross-
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the first time I was able to visit the urban coastal domestic and rural buildings in Brian’s native Nova Scotia, as well as his amazing farm located on the LaHave River estuary and the Atlantic Coast. It is on his farm that students of architecture from across the globe have participated in the numerous Ghost Lab design-build events that were conducted over two-week periods. In 2011, Brian undertook possibly the last of the Ghost programs, Number 13, where I was a participant. This event brought together a group of like-minded professionals to discuss “values of place, craft and community,” the subject of Brian’s deepest concerns. Those 13 Ghost events, structured and conducted by Brian, have contributed to the education of students and architects, like few others have, for two decades. At the same time, he has held numerous professorships within Canada and abroad, contributing to architectural education both nationally and internationally. Nova Scotia can present some of the toughest of climatic and siting conditions. Dense forests that make for dark, monolithic, impenetrable barriers abut the coastal waters. Sea- and wind-worn rocks line the shores and keep the forests at bay. This “cleared” land area provides a superb but very difficult zone between the forests and the coastal and estuarine waters, where only responsible architecture could be built. Combined with the rhythms of rain, sleet and sunshine, the durability of materials and detailing are fully tested. Historic buildings, particularly those associated with fishing and lobster harvesting, inform how well various materials perform, and Brian has drawn much knowledge through observation of those buildings of his region. He has produced strong, modern, tough and geometric works that weather into their landscapes superbly. On these most complex of sites, I am impressed by Brian’s integration of his work to place, culture, tradition, craft, technology and community. His are works of architecture that embody prospect and refuge. They respond to, rather than impose on, the conditions of place. The work of Brian MacKay-Lyons possesses clarity in planning and section, resulting in forms that are direct, simple, responsible, honest and elegant. They are a superb synthesis of traditional architecture, the land and modern architecture. Many of his buildings have that rarest of qualities—authenticity. Brian is a most worthy RAIC Gold Medal recipient!
Brian MacKay-Lyons performs a site sketch on the beach. ABOVE, A view of the first Ghost project; an informal discussion with architect Keith Graham at a Ghost event; participant builders at the Ghost 2 workshop.
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The tower-like form of Ghost 6 under construction; Brian MacKay-Lyons introduces scholar Kenneth Frampton for his keynote speech at the Ghost 13 symposium. OPPOSITE, LEFT TO RIGHT Participants at Ghost 11 constructed the Troop Barn at Kingsburg; a sketch by Brian MacKayLyons, made in Mali on a trip with architects Rick Joy, Marlon Blackwell, Tom Kundig, Wendell Burnett and Peter Rich in search of architecture’s primitive origins.
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section of people around the world. He is an individual who spreads his love of architecture effortlessly, via both a deep knowledge of his subject matter and a healthy dose of humour. Brian’s work transcends specific areas of expertise. Through a powerful act of imagination, in 1994 he founded the first Ghost Lab on his farm near Lunenburg. Over the years, Ghost Labs became, in his own words, “a meeting place for a ‘school’ of architects who continue to share a commitment to landscape, making and community.” And it became much more. It drew not only architects but educators, students, journalists, writers and others from around the world. Ghost connected interests in landscape, making and community with the joys of teaching, learning, discussing and socializing…and, for Brian, with the love of family, friends and animals. Ghost put Brian’s various loves and interests together, in one place, at one time. The experience of a Ghost Lab was a form of condensation, more submersive than simply connective. The “final” Ghost Lab in 2011 (planned around resistance to the globalization of architectural culture) marks the end of a series of remarkable events. What remains are the memories—those remarkable ghosts— courtesy of Brian. Brigitte Shim, CM, FRAIC, Hon. FAIA and Howard Sutcliffe, CM, FRAIC, Hon. FAIA The work of Brian MacKay-Lyons has emerged from his unwavering be-
lief in the importance of building place and community before you build buildings. His deeply held values have been the foundation of his exemplary architectural practice, his role as an influential educator, as well as his rich and all-encompassing family life. Through Brian’s commitment to building buildings that make spaces as well as places, he has clearly demonstrated insightful and meaningful relationships between the vernacular and modernity. Brian MacKay-Lyons is a deserving recipient of the RAIC Gold Medal because he has always redefined the local through the lens of the global. His work has allowed us to see new and profound ways of reshaping our built environment. His bold projects—both public and private and in both urban and rural settings—have left an indelible mark on all of us. Bruce Kuwabara, OC, FRAIC In the 35 years I have known Brian MacKay-Lyons, he has completed a significant body of work which stands as a major contribution to the field of architecture in Canada and internationally. Born in Arcadia, and living, teaching and practicing in Halifax, Brian has invested his career and his life in the development of architectural projects and teaching in ways that have integrated his love and knowledge of the culture and context of Eastern Canada. Brian is recognized for his intensive integration of making and building things, reinterpreting vernacular traditions and creating exemplars
Marlon Blackwell, FAIA Brian MacKay-Lyons has been a friend, mentor and an inspiration for 15 years. I admire his courage to be narrowly focused, operating with a few core principles that he lives and builds by. He represents the gold standard in the thinking and practicing of architecture in the fullest sense. His approach is a bottom-up process, fuelled by the material culture of place and with a great fidelity to both craft and thought—in space, form and detail. Beyond the impact of his built work, Brian is a great teacher. His Ghost Lab provided a unique and transformative design/build experience for young students, graduates and professionals where they learned by following his guidance in executing sublime works that both evoke traditions and project possible futures. I love the guy, his humour, his passion, and the dignity in how he represents our discipline.
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that demonstrate how contemporary architecture can respond to landscapes and urban contexts while expressing something fresh, relevant and new.
work in the place where it sits. His projects in Nova Scotia are real, authentic and positive additions to this rural and beautiful landscape. Each year I travel from Norway to spend my summers in Nova Scotia. I always take the time to meet with Brian and Talbot, then to visit some of their new projects. It is always a delight to see a new building by their firm. They are ever-evolving and never seem to disappoint. When talking to Brian, one always enjoys the feeling of excitement and curiosity that resonates when discussing the evolution of his work.
Tod Williams, FAIA With the RAIC Gold Medal, Brian MacKay-Lyons is finally being given his due. Much as Glenn Murcutt (winner of the 2002 Pritzker Prize) was known throughout Australia in the 1980s-1990s, Brian’s contribution is an architecture that is deeply invested in the creative reinterpretation of place. His modest architectural practice is far from the largest cities and centres of power. His work, mostly houses, is place-based and research-based, and always emphasizes a quiet yet powerful connection to the land. Word of this powerful approach has been spreading through his Ghost conferences and will be further celebrated by this award. Brian’s work is especially relevant today, in a rapidly globalizing world and economy. His selection for the Gold Medal is an important reminder to us all to slow down, take stock, and appreciate our place on this earth. Todd Saunders The work of Brian MacKay-Lyons fascinates me. It is very local and extremely specific. The architecture and buildings of the world today are, unfortunately, becoming more and more the same with very few distinct characteristics. One cannot tell the difference between a building in, for example, New York and another building in Singapore. When I view Brian’s work, I know where it belongs and where it is built. It could only
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TEACHER, MENTOR, PARTNER TEXT
ABOVE A view of Brian MacKay-Lyons atop his tractor, tending his rural property in Kingsburg, Nova Scotia.
Talbot Sweetapple
Teacher I first met Brian in 1993. I was at the studio in my first week of architecture school at Dalhousie University. Brian entered the studio one evening and asked the students, “Where is the guy who thinks he can play ping pong?” That night I lost 6 games to 0. As a Newfoundlander from a small community, I quickly and intuitively gravitated towards Brian as a teacher. At the age of 38, he was already an accomplished architect carving out a world that was rooted in place, craft and material culture. Our conversations in the studio continually centred on constructability and meaning— notions we both believed had a place amongst the fundamental issues of architecture. This conversation was ramped up a few notches during the first Ghost project in Kingsburg. Campfire seminars were where the learning happened. This is where I fully experienced Brian’s deep commitment to education. Mentor Brian is a master draftsman in the traditional sense: he sees drawing and sketching as the core skills of an architect. He is in a perpetual state of sketching. Early on in my career, the office was in a con-
verted garage attached to Brian’s row house in Halifax’s North End. One night, I proudly produced a nice set of sketches for his review. Early the next morning, he looked at my drawings and remarked, “Good work, but you really need to work on your sketching.” Before I could respond, his three kids came to him one by one and gave him a kiss before they departed for school. Is this the life of an architect, I wondered? As an intern, I was guided to always achieve high standards. With Brian’s exacting expectations—knowing some would quit, but others would persist and flourish—he never let his mentees settle for simply “good enough.” After sketching together for 20 years, I can now draw. The way Brian set up his studio fostered the idea of a master/apprentice relationship. This reflects his time spent with Barton Myers and Charles Moore. It was very important that we sit across the table from each other with the drawing between us, so we could both work on it. It was learning at its best. To this day, Brian will draw a site plan from the land and I will draw it from the sea.
tect and just enjoying life. One day, I went to his farm to discuss a project. When I arrived, he was finishing up some chores on his tractor. That day, we chased sheep, sketched his new paddock layout, designed a house, fixed a fence, drank beer, and designed an embassy. This was a good day in architecture; the relationship between work and life was natural. In 2005, Brian and I formalized our working relationship and formed a partnership. Since then, his collaborative way of working has continued to be fine-tuned. His design process is ever more inclusive. Ideas can come from anyone and anywhere: an intern, a client, his wife. Brian’s commitment to collaboration and inclusivity has been a founding value for our partnership and for the firm. Brian’s constant pursuit of excellence and meaning in architecture—and in life—continues to inspire me. It has been an honour to be his wing man over the last 22 years. Congratulations to my teacher, mentor, partner and friend on deservedly receiving such an honour.
Partner Brian has the ability and capacity to be always “on,” not distinguishing between being an archi-
Talbot Sweetapple is a partner at MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, and Professor of Practice at Dalhousie University.
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