Plain Modern: The Architecture of Brian MacKay-Lyons

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.