Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)So much architecture these days is known primarily because it is the same general thing repeated endlessly. Sort of like the houses made of ticky-tacky in Daly City. Then once in a while you find a book like this one which features a series of buildings, that truly stand out.
Located mostly in Nova Scotia, the architecture of Mr. MacKay-Lyons stands out as truly distinctive. Mostly of small rather inexpensive residences that are very difficult to make dramatic, here are examples of beautiful buildings. Further, most of them are small, and that means inexpensive. As he puts it, they do not have the big debt philosophy. You live in a tarpaper shack until you can afford siding.
Besides houses, there are various commercial builings included from a dramatic theater, a Canadian embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh, office buildings and university buildings.
Finally, for several years he has hosted a gathering of interested people in building a structure on land he owns just to explore the limits of what can be done. These projects, called Ghost, are illustrated to give form to some of their ideas.
Splendid book.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Plain Modern: The Architecture of Brian MacKay-Lyons (New Voices in Architecture)
It's been our distinct pleasure over the past few years to publish monographs on a select group of young architects and firms whose work represents the best of contemporary design thinking while retaining a distinctive regional sensibility. The Nova-Scotian architect Brian MacKay-Lyons fits neatly into this distinguished list, which includes Marlon Blackwell in the Ozarks, Rick Joy in the Southwest, and Miller/Hull in the Northwest. Those familiar with Nova Scotia understand the austere beauty of this Canadian landscape, with its wide open skies and rugged terrain pushing up against the Atlantic. MacKay-Lyons's work responds to this unique topography and to the vernacular building traditions that define its communities. His houses, commercial buildings, and public projects combine regional forms with local materials, technologies, and building practices to create works that are linked to their environments right down to their DNA. Peaked gables, shed roofs, and sliding doors are inspired by local barn types; corrugated metal cladding comes from the buildings used by the area's fishing industry; structural wooden frames are based on local ship-building traditions. These elements communicate a sense of place that is sophisticated, accessible, and free of sentimentality. Novelist and historian Malcolm Quantrill weaves together an intimate portrait of MacKay-Lyons and his work, elucidating the "peculiar regionality" of his subject's architecture.A New Voices monograph published with The Graham Foundation.
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