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Skyroom: The Journey of Brian And Marilyn Mackay-Lyons at Shobac, a Seaside Village on the Edge of Architectural and Utopian Possibility
In SkyRoom, novelist Larry Gaudet tells the story of Shobac, a seaside village recognized internationally as the masterwork of famed Canadian architect Brian Mackay-Lyons.
In partnership with his wife Marilyn Mackay-Lyons and their family, he has built a unique community over the granite ruins of a historic settlement on the fogbound coast of Nova Scotia. Among the structures at Shobac are homes, barns, studios, cottages, fishing shacks, a boathouse, even a schoolhouse, all designed in Mackay-Lyons’s compelling architectural language that fuses contemporary Modernism with Nova Scotia building traditions.
SkyRoom is written in a new genre that Gaudet calls magic architectural realism, blending fact with historical fiction in presenting the lives of early inhabitants and visitors to the Shobac area, including Samuel de Champlain, a Mi’kmaq mystic, an Acadian carpenter and other lively characters whose ghostly presence swirl in the untold myths of this coastal Shangri-La. More provocatively, Gaudet orchestrates imaginary conversations between Mackay-Lyons and legendary figures in architecture – Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore and others – all towards providing a novel perspective on what goes into building communities and homes worth living in.
In partnership with his wife Marilyn Mackay-Lyons and their family, he has built a unique community over the granite ruins of a historic settlement on the fogbound coast of Nova Scotia. Among the structures at Shobac are homes, barns, studios, cottages, fishing shacks, a boathouse, even a schoolhouse, all designed in Mackay-Lyons’s compelling architectural language that fuses contemporary Modernism with Nova Scotia building traditions.
SkyRoom is written in a new genre that Gaudet calls magic architectural realism, blending fact with historical fiction in presenting the lives of early inhabitants and visitors to the Shobac area, including Samuel de Champlain, a Mi’kmaq mystic, an Acadian carpenter and other lively characters whose ghostly presence swirl in the untold myths of this coastal Shangri-La. More provocatively, Gaudet orchestrates imaginary conversations between Mackay-Lyons and legendary figures in architecture – Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore and others – all towards providing a novel perspective on what goes into building communities and homes worth living in.
240 pages, Paperback
Published January 18, 2022
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April 24, 2023
This is one of the most unique books related to architecture I’ve read. Projects are covered, sure, but not in an explicit way. It’s more oblique; basically a rumination on how a place can make someone feel, live differently, and experience the world at large and small scales.
There’s some speculative history / fiction, imagining past occupants, their impacts on a place…their ghosts.
And there’s a Portrait of the Artist - but about both the architect and the “enabling” partner, their specific trajectory that resulted in their “village” and their lives in it.
There are descriptions of experiences. Alone in a place or with others. Working, celebrating, or contemplating. Each an experience observed and savored by the author and those involved in making the places in which they take place.
Finally, there is the place as a sort of character: the coast of Nova Scotia as setting, motivation, host of ghosts, and inspiration. The author’s descriptions of it, strewn generously throughout all parts of the text, are beguiling.
There’s some speculative history / fiction, imagining past occupants, their impacts on a place…their ghosts.
And there’s a Portrait of the Artist - but about both the architect and the “enabling” partner, their specific trajectory that resulted in their “village” and their lives in it.
There are descriptions of experiences. Alone in a place or with others. Working, celebrating, or contemplating. Each an experience observed and savored by the author and those involved in making the places in which they take place.
Finally, there is the place as a sort of character: the coast of Nova Scotia as setting, motivation, host of ghosts, and inspiration. The author’s descriptions of it, strewn generously throughout all parts of the text, are beguiling.
Displaying 1 of 1 review