Not many architects begin talks on their work to the strains of Robert Johnson and Eric Clapton, but for Brian Mackay-Lyons their respective versions of Crossroads demonstrate his “convection view of culture” – the notion that all culture begins with the poor, rises to a high point then crashes before starting the process over again. In his view, the grass roots level of culture provides the everyday vernacular – “the ugly 80% of the world” – which, in Mackay-Lyons’ Nova Scotia homeland, has always been made of wood. “If you operate within a cultural tradition, you don’t need a theory to begin to build. You know what a building is going to be made of and if it’s not made of that, then you can’t afford it.”
Learning from the vernacular (“the only models for sustainability come from the vernacular”) has been fundamental to Brian Mackay-Lyons’ architecture for over 25 years, and has produced a continuous stream of outstanding timber house designs that are quintessentially modern while firmly rooted in the cultural landscape of Nova Scotia. Often described as an exponent of “critical regionalism”, his architecture has grown out of a sense of place and the social democratic
traditions of the province in which he lives. For him, culture and process are far more important than image, and he happily uses the words of his friend Glenn Murcutt to describe his own houses as “semi-tailored garments” in which culture contributes 80% of the work and design the other 20%.
Context, climate, and a profound understanding of the materials he employs are all combined in designs that stretch the possibilities of timber domestic architecture. Building in Canada’s wilderness is very different from the man-made agrarian landscape we have in the UK and this, combined with the harsh extremes of climate in Nova Scotia and the horizontally-driven rain of Canada’s eastern seaboard, have been primary determinants in the siting, form and detailing of Mackay-Lyons’ houses. But far from designing heavy-duty, solid structures simply to keep out the weather, he defers to the boatbuilding traditions of the area and aims instead for “zeroness”, a kinetic skin of timber he describes as getting as close as possible to nothing at all, or more precisely, the extent of material that can be taken out of a wall while still maintaining resistance to wind shear.
In simple terms, this increasingly means almost non-existent eaves to roofs and windows that have their frames flush with the outside surface of the wall, features that, in combination with the timber shingles used in his ‘Hill House’, give an abstracted minimalist quality to the building’s end façade (in many of his houses, shingles are used in three layers – like duck feathers – to keep out wind and rain). As Alvaro Siza once commented, “plainness is no accident in good architecture”, and in Mackay-Lyons’ houses plainness is clearly the feature he has been striving to refine in the framed timber structures and external wood surfaces of project after project.
Yet this is not the kind of beautiful but expensive minimalism encountered in projects by architects like John Pawson – relatively speaking these are low cost constructions, often built on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis, a common funding route in mortgage-averse Nova Scotia. Projects built in this way can take many years to complete, but the problems normally associated with protracted construction programmes are offset here by the fact that the methods of assembly and the materials used are a well understood – and tested – part of the local culture.
In parallel with developing his ideas through his domestic timber projects, over the past several years Mackay-Lyons has mounted an experimental research laboratory on the coastal farmland he owns. For two weeks each July the project has attracted students, critics and architects to work together exploring timber design issues, the solutions to which they then construct full size. Until recently the projects have been temporary, but the event has grown in reputation and size and the latest stage of the Mackay-Lyons’ plan is to complete a permanent studio and visitor accommodation built from wood.
The site itself is spectacular and with rich historical resonances – this was the first New World landing place of Samuel de Champlain in 1603 and the land still contains the foundation walls of the original settlement. These stone walls have provided the base support for the experimental timber structures that are built each year and given the lab its name. The ‘Ghost’ projects that began as an adjunct to Mackay-Lyons’ professorial commitments at Dalhousie University in Halifax now have an international prestige all of their own, with students from around the world vying for the opportunity to take part. Learning in this kind of environment about the properties of timber and the simple ways in which distinctive forms of modern architecture can be constructed is a model worthy of replication, but for Mackay-Lyons the work also informs his ideas for the structure, framing and cladding of new timber houses.
The practice has grown (it is now Mackay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects) and is undertaking larger projects in a number of different countries, but for those interested in the possibilities of timber in architecture, it is Mackay-Lyons’ houses that continue to impress and influence. The synthesis of climate, site, structure, form and materials in each project is rarely made so apparent in architecture and this interconnectedness can be as surprising a revelation for other architects as it is for students. A recent week-long lecture tour in Scotland saw Mackay-Lyons talk to five packed houses, and the enthusiasm for his work may well prove to have a significant impact on the next generation of timber projects built there. The one-time US president Benjamin Franklin famously stated, “if you want to build a house, build it modern”, and the next publication of houses by Brian Mackay-Lyons has the potential to be the definitive primer for all who wish to do exactly that.
