Brian MacKay-Lyons

Brian MacKay-Lyons is a Canadian architect best known for his designs for houses on the coast of his native Nova Scotia, and his use of Atlantic Canadian vernacular materials and construction techniques. His life in Arcadia, its history, culture, landscape and architecture have been hugely influential to MacKay-Lyons. He is a founding partner of MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, and a professor of at the Dalhousie University School of Architecture in Halifax. In 1994 he founded the Ghost Laboratory, a summer educational design-build on his family farm in Upper Kingsburg, Nova Scotia, in efforts to remedy the disconnect between theory in practice in architectural education. His designs recognize the importance of context to a place, emphasize the landscape, and seek to unite traditional and contemporary building practices.