Thursday, August 09, 2007

q & a with brian mackay-lyons




cathleen mcguigan did a piece on the ghost lab host brian mackay-lyons in a july issue of newsweek. mackay-lyon's [other] book, plain modern, is an exploration in regionalist modernism, or as mcguigan puts it: "renewed modernism". brian emphasizes the distinction between this type of modernism and the one of the 1950's by addressing context, urbanism and landscape in the north american way.

“Starchitects” are doing more overgrown coffee-table ornaments all over the world, and it’s just making that worse—you know, just dropping something in Dubai and then flying home..."


one of our favorite excerpts is a quip about fellow canadian architect frank gehry:


"...Gehry—funny, you know he’s a Canadian guy, too. [Gehry was raised in Toronto.] I think it’s important to respect your elders in any civilized society, and I think he’s just one of those people who’s off the radar—he’s a genius, I think he’s an absolute genius and I don’t like his work..."

as some of you may recall, we spent a fortnight on the coast of nova scotia last year designing and building a studio space know as "ghost 8". by this time, there should be number 9, and hopefully those images will surface soon. here is an image of last summer's ghost 8:



3 comments:

Michelle Linden said...

That comment about Gehry just about sums up my opinion of him... I think he's an absolute genius and I don't like his work.

Thanks for passing on the article about BM-L

archaalto said...

glad you enjoyed it. i'll try to post more about the ghost 9 when I find it.

Anonymous said...

can anyone please give me any info on house #22 Oxner's Head located in the coast of Nova Scotia?
I am looking for house plans, elevations, etc...