Brian MacKay-Lyons: Selected Projects, 1986-1997

James A. Love is a professor of architecture in the Faculty of
Environmental Design and an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering
at the University of Calgary. His latest publication (in press) is the
Illuminating Engineering Society’s Recommended

Brian Mackay-Lyons is the four-time winner of the Governor General’s
Award for architecture; he is for that reason alone a worthy subject.
His mentor, Charles Moore of the United States, was a relative rarity
among architects. Moore emphasized that architecture must capture the
“realm of dreams”; his work was both respected by other architects
and appreciated by the laity. One expects MacKay-Lyons’s projects to
have a similar reception, through his adept personal fusion of the
Maritime vernacular with contemporary concerns. His range extends from
designing modern structures to adapting the techniques of traditional
boat-builders for use in shore-based structures.

The book traces MacKay-Lyons’s projects from his early designs for
rural residences to the new computer science building for Dalhousie
University (a work-in-progress). His insertion of an office-residential
building into the historic fabric of Halifax is particularly successful
in relating new ideas about the expression of dwelling and living to old
ones. The volume is edited by Brian Carter, Chair of the Department of
Architecture at the University of Michigan, who has also taught at the
School of Architecture in Halifax, where Mackay-Lyons holds an academic
appointment.

Many excellent photographs and illustrations fill the pages, but the
lack of color photography obscures the vividness of the Maritime
tradition evident in Mackay-Lyons’s projects. Also disappointing is
that the book’s many terms and concepts require a knowledge of the
architectural literature beyond that of the casual reader. If the
architectural community is to cultivate a wider appreciation of its art,
it would do well to make its literature more broadly comprehensible.