JAMES STEEVES
JAMES BRITTAIN PHOTOGRAPHY
CANADIAN ARCHITECT 08/22
50 GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MEDAL IN ARCHITECTURE
VILLAGE AT THE END OF THE WORLD LOCATION
Upper Kingsburg, Nova Scotia Brian MacKay-Lyons, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Ltd.
ARCHITECT
Architecture begins with the land. The site for this project was a seasonal settlement for millennia for the Mi’kmaq First Nation (architect Brian MacKay-Lyon’s ancestors), a safe harbour for early French and Basque fishermen to dry their catch, an Acadian colony in the early 1600s, and a foreign Protestant settlement in the 1750s. The legacy of inhabitation of this place is one of diverse cultures and continuous evolution, with forests giving way to farmlands, then returning back again. With the help of friends, neighbours and colleagues, the architect, over 25 years, has re-cleared the forest and cultivated the soil, revealing its historic ruins and uncovering its 500 years of agrarian history. Many of the structures that occupy the Atlantic Nova Scotia coastline site are products of an international design/build program called Ghost, which started on the land in 1994. The spirit of collaboration and community engagement born from Ghost has given way to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Today, the village is the centre of a community and way of working that holds at its core the values gleaned from Ghost: working together, economy as ethic, spirit of place, and the critical study of vernacular building practice. Amongst the ruins of the site, a proto-urban village has emerged that serves as a school, farm, and community. The first Ghost Lab started when, frustrated with the state of architectural education, MacKay-Lyons pulled his students out of school to participate in a two-week event, culminating in the erection a temporary installation on the property he had recently purchased. The glowing structure evoked an archetypal farmhouse, with a sparse wood frame
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draped in white fabric. At the end of the two weeks, the construction was lit from inside, and served as a venue for a community concert. This tradition continued for twelve years, culminating in an international conference that brought together builders, architects, students, historians and the local community in the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, or Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio. Since that time, MacKay-Lyons has operated as the ‘village architect,’ building a collection of more than 40 structures on the site. The village has continued to evolve as the venue for community events, a living school, and an office research laboratory. Structures added over time include a relocated and restored 1830 schoolhouse, a minimalist dwelling for an architectural apprentice-in-residence, and a new community of dwellings. The resulting village is an expression of utopian architectural ambitions, an optimistic act of will, and a form of resistance in the face of the numbing cultural influence of globalization. It is an argument for landscape stewardship through agricultural and architectural cultivation. The village is a place that expresses the unity of life, integrating practice and teaching, family and community. :: Jury :: The jury applauded this lifetime architectural achievement,
showing the transformational power of architecture on a site. The quality of the individual buildings adds up to more than the sum of its parts and emphasizes the village quality of the 25-years-plus project. It was also the educational dimension of the project that drew the attention of the jury.
2022-07-19 3:09 PM
