Date: 23 December 08
Author: Caroline Ednie, Web Editor
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MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects is widely considered to be one of the world’s leading exponents of critical regionalist architecture. The Nova Scotia based firm, which started life in 1985 as Brian MacKay-Lyons Architecture Urban Design, became MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple 20 years later when Talbot Sweetapple joined the founding architect as Partner. The practice has enjoyed widespread critical acclaim for their buildings in Nova Scotia, and in addition both MacKay Lyons and Sweetapple are active in architectural education. Together have held 12 endowed academic chairs and visiting professorships at some of the leading North American and European universities.
Ahead of his personal appearance at the forthcoming Building Biographies Symposium, which will take place at The Lighthouse on 7th January, Talbot Sweetapple took time out to speak exclusively to www.scottisharchitecture.com's Editor, Caroline Ednie.
University of Prince Edward Island - click on image to enlarge
CE: Can you describe how McKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects has come to be regarded as“leading exponents of critical regionalist architecture worldwide”?
TS: “Kenneth Frampton coined the phrase ‘critical regionalism’ and it’s something that we really base a lot of our practice theory on. What it means is that basically we look to ‘place’ to reinterpret local building traditions and we combine that with modern ideas and interpretation. We think that we can get the best quality if we can work within a region and find out how what region actually represents in terms of its building practices. That way we can guarantee that we get the best quality and ultimately our buildings will be of their ‘place’.
Although we live differently than we did 400 years ago, the way that we use wood in Nova Scotia for example, hasn’t changed that much. A lot of the traditions that were developed here 400 years ago we still use. It’s important to use local trades, people and materials. If we started importing travertine from Italy it wouldn’t be sustainable.”
You mentioned the ‘s’ word (sustainable)! Hasn’t this become so overused that it’s been rendered almost meaningless?
“We don’t use sustainability as a marketing tool like most people do. I can’t define sustainability – we just do it. Of course your buildings have to embody as low energy as possible, but going out and marketing yourself saying that you do that is ridiculous.
Any self-respecting architect who cares about the world has to think about all those things all of the time. When you’re designing buildings it has to be there, it’s not an option. When I hear a firm call itself sustainable I get suspicious. It’s ingrained in the way that we work. If you understand where you are and understand how you build and why you should be building, then you’re 80% there. When we place windows to the south and incorporate wooden shingles on our buildings in Nova Scotia instead of importing the travertine from Italy, you’re already almost there. It’s common sense.
There’s many different aspects to sustainability – there’s energy, materials, what you do to your site, what you do to the living / working environment. In terms of the energy aspect many architects are trying to figure this out from a science point of view – but we’re not focused on that. We’re more focused on cultural sustainability. We look at the whole picture. The first question that should be asked if you’re a good architect looking at the globe and trying to be ‘sustainable’ is ‘do you really need that building’. You can’t just accept a commission to build a new Ford plant outside Halifax without questioning why it’s being done.”
Sliding House - click on image to enlarge
How does your critical regionalism approach in Nova Scotia translate to, say, Bangladesh where you are currently building the Canadian Chancery and Official residence in Dhaka?
“I guess our biggest test is Bangladesh. We’re not going to bring our regional ideas from Nova Scotia but ultimately our approach is still a common sense one.
What we did when we first received the commission was to immerse ourselves into the building culture of Bangladesh. We did lots of research and building practice tours, visiting construction sites, learning how to build in the region. Bamboo, tin, concrete and brick – that’s basically all the materials that they use there. The Dhaka Government wanted us to use all these high tech materials in the building, but we argued that in order to achieve a quality building we wanted to use local people to build it, and utilise their particular building skills. We had to argue and propose a position but in the event the building uses 80% local brick. It’s a common sense approach but we really get into it, exploit it and make it ring in the concept of our designs.
I think that our beliefs and philosophy can be adapted to any region in the world. That’s what we tested in Bangladesh. Our approach is a way of seeing the world with the making of the building a constant. Client relations are different of course, but when it comes to composing the architecture, there’s no difference. If you go in blind then it would be difficult, but if you go into a project with an understanding and echo the local building traditions then it informs your design. So we knew that we were going to be getting into a concrete structure with brick veneer in Bangladesh. That’s how they build in that region and we use that to our advantage.”
MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple seems to have become something of a poster child practice for many young architectural practitioners in Scotland. Would you agree with this assessment?
“Yes, I think that’s true. We’re also the poster child practice for a few different regions particularly in the Southern USA. We’ve got a lot of peer respect in the Mid-West. In the big urban centres such as New York and Chicago they couldn’t care less about what we are doing, their heads are so far under the sand. They operate in a fashion world.
Unfortunately, I see fashion creeping into some cities, Glasgow for instance, and you know that these ‘fashionable’ buildings will have a shelf life of only about a year. There does seem to be a mentality of following fashion, which is maybe OK for retail because this is going to keep changing, but for public institutions that have a civic presence, to reflect fashion rather than authenticity is a real shame.
I’ve looked at a lot of architectural traditions and I think a lot of recent Scottish architecture doesn’t seem rooted in its history as much as it used to be. A lot of the modern stuff that has taken over your cities is not particularly rooted in your tradition. We try to look to ‘place’ to keep our feet on the ground. Whenever we think about having to be fashionable we slap ourselves on the wrist.”
Hill House - click on image to enlarge
Who would you cite as your own mentors?
“We’ve got mentors of our own who we believe produce authentic, timeless buildings. Louis Khan is probably our biggest mentor when it comes to the making of space and systems of architecture. There’s a timeless aesthetic in his work and what’s also great about it is that it didn’t follow any style or trend. Khan did his own thing according to what was in his heart at the time and that is something we are inspired by.
We have different mentors for different ideas. When it comes to the critical regionalist approach our big mentor would be Glen Murcutt. Brian knew him a long time ago and has maintained contact ever since. Murcutt has been a big influence on the way we think about region, place, environment, sustainability, and materials.
Another big influence is Charles Moore, who was one of Brian’s teachers. He brought Humanism as an idea back into the focus of Modernist architecture in North America. Charles Moore’s book, ‘ The Place of Houses’ was pivotal for us, as it talks about the rituals of dwelling, domesticity, and habitation, and looks at the importance of eating, reading and sleeping in your home - not looking at the home as an object in a museum. We take a lot of pride in looking to historical precedents to give meaning to what we do. We use precedent intensely. The marriage between international precedent and architectural history as a discourse melding with local traditions is something that we are concerned with as a practice. For example we’re doing a golf clubhouse, and we’re looking at Scottish villages for precedence in how to develop a masterplan. Nova Scotia has its own little Highlands and that’s where the links course is happening.”
Do you feel that being based in a small industrial port town in Nova Scotia affects the practice profile?
I think that being based in Nova Scotia means that we’re not considered for a lot of building commissions. If we put our credentials next to bigger city based practices that have a lot of fashionable projects, it’s hard to beat them. But when we do get a sophisticated client with an intellectual agenda – whether for a house, university or embassy - we can connect with these people on an intellectual level and make an argument that they can buy into.
Our body of work is substantial but not fashionable. We’re just sticking to our guns. We probably appeal to 2% of the population but we’re happy with this 2% who have the understanding of the intellectual approach that we like to bring to our projects. I think there’s a myth to the idea that you must be based in a city to know what’s going on. I lived and worked in Toronto, and you can get caught up in the city itself. It’s easy to put on the blinkers and look straight ahead, to the point that you don’t know what’s going on in the world.
When you’re in cities you get caught up in these fashions and trends – the rat race. It’s essential to survive in a city to play those games. If we were based in a city, Brian and I would probably be sitting in one room with the phone not ringing. We would have had to play the game and sell out a little bit, do some things that you don’t want to be. We’re in a privileged position where we are, as people come and seek out us now.
I’m from Newfoundland, which is the furthest eastern Canadian province. It’s probably around the size of the UK yet with a population of around 500k people. Coming from a smaller place than Nova Scotia when it comes to population and culture I think I’m in a privileged position. I think the further away you are the more real it is. Brian comes from the same version of Nova Scotia as Newfoundland so we have this in common. When someone goes to a restaurant in downtown Toronto and orders veal and only eats half of it, they don’t have any understanding of what they just did – they have a disconnection. I get to see and hear that calf every day when I look out of my bedroom window.
The definition of our values and mentality and the reason we get along is that we come from the same cultural background when it comes to ‘place’ and caring about ‘place’. The way we live and work on the land and the sea is a lot different from the way we live in the city. We’re not some kind of heritage police, we’re realists.”
Ghost - click on image to enlarge
You emphasise practicality and common sense when describing your approach, but your work is also characterised by a refinement and elegance – a beauty even. Would you agree with this?
“There is skill in what we do when it comes to composition and craft and I suppose at the end of the day that is one version of what beauty is. But it’s not beauty in the make-up sense. Beautiful is an old man with a chiselled face rather than a fashion model with lots of make-up. I think if our work is beautiful then it is beautiful through integrity rather than aesthetics. A building has to have the right personality and identity and craft, scale proportion and composition and I think we have a skill when it comes to doing these kind of things. We work hard at this and I would say that the buildings do have their own presence.
I used to be a philosophy major so the ‘beauty’ word is one of those big ones. I suppose I prescribe to the Kantian theory of beauty, which is that the only people that can really judge true beauty are the people who have genius in subject. So if Kenneth Frampton or Charles Rennie Mackintosh said I had beautiful elevations then I guess that would be important to me. It’s not a common comment that our work is beautiful, more often words like integrity are used, but I suppose in a way that can be interpreted as beauty…”
Central to the practice’s raison d’etre appears to be teaching and education in general?
There are two ways to do things – do what you do and get your work out there. There is also education. Brian and I do the lecture circuit as teaching is a big thing for us.
Brian is professor at Dalhousie University, which is one of the best architecture schools in the country. I also teach as a sessional instructor. We also choose to take on the Chairs, at Unversities such as Dusseldorf, Washington and Harvard. We do this for a couple of reasons: we like to teach is the first reason; we also like getting out there to see what’s going on in the world. We like to get our work out there too.
“Ghost has also taken on in a big way” (the Ghost Architectural Laboratory is the research facility of MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. It is an education initiative designed to promote the transfer of architectural knowledge through direct experience). “That’s how I first met Brian. I was a student at the school and he came and presented his idea for the first Ghost, around 15 years ago, and I signed up for it. We started our professional relationship at the first Ghost.
Being the antithesis of the so-called ‘starchitecture’ system, do you think that MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects’ authentic, practical approach could be perceived as something of a beacon during the current downturn in the global economy and the devastating effect that it’s having on the building industry?
‘Starchitects and the statements that they make are very expensive. We pride ourselves on what we give in terms of bang for your buck – our buildings don’t cost a lot of money at all. In a way when it comes to people and their money many are keeping their purse strings very tight, so if they want to have a building they’re going to want to have the best value. A lot of the big firms have spent a lot of money designing frivolous buildings. At the moment a ‘starchitect’ designed building is being built in Toronto and I’ve seen the amount of steel being used, and it must have cost the equivalent of a small country – its gratuitous.
I’ve never been asked this question but it’s weird because we’re getting more phone calls today than we have ever had. People with money are looking at the current economic situation and seeing opportunities to take advantage of prices going down and getting a good value building. The people who don’t have cash – they are usually clients that have to make money from what they build and this tends to be residential or commercial properties. Institutions like universities that we do work for, they’re going to continue going. Now that I think about it I think a lot of people will be looking to us. In a way we are recession proof.
I was speaking to someone the other day from one of the biggest construction firms in the world who works with some of the world’s biggest architects and he was scared. He was envious of us with our little office, and seeing us having fun and designing things we want to do. Brian carved this little niche and I keep adding to it.
We’re a lean practice, and we don’t take on people to do silly commissions. We are in this position not by luck but by design and Brian and myself have a really strong will to make sure that we continue to make it happen."
Images copyright: MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects
Talbot Sweetapple was one of the keynote speakers at the recent Building Biographies Symposium which took place at The Lighthouse on Wednesday 7th January 2009. To read more about the Symposium click on the following link
