#Ghostlab cases free

As with fables and parables, such stories often carry a lesson.Ĭlose your eyes and imagine a foggy mid-summer's night. They evoke a timeless culture and a landscape, and allow the listener to project him- or herself into this ideal imaginary. MacKay-Lyons' tales, like good ghost stories, weave magic around the telling. Whether the story is true or not is immaterial. He anchors his buildings in local stories, the 'vernacular' you might say. As a native son of Nova Scotia, Brian MacKay-Lyons likes to tell a story - in person or through his projects.

In the Maritime provinces of Canada, stories from the past color all aspects of present-day life. Ghost stories are a form of travel - not across space to other countries and cultures, but across time, carrying our imagination with us. And who does not remember hearing ghost stories from other children? Riveting, evocative, at times terrifying - such stories allow us to feel and breathe the atmosphere of the past. We may remember parents or grandparents relating crucial events in the lives of ancestors schoolteachers bringing to life forgotten figures from the past or religious teachers revealing aspects of the spirit world. By “listening” to the site’s rich history and local material culture traditions, yet “willing” buildings which are clearly modern, the Ghost Lab is a built critical regionalist argument.įor most of us, our first encounter with ghosts is through stories.

The court refers both to the environmental common sense of the simple barnyard, and a proto-urban aspiration. All structures are constructed of local technology and local renewable materials from nearby sawmills. The courtyard makes a south-facing microclimate which compliments the passive solar structures. From an environmental perspective, the campus is a relatively dense compound, conserving the surrounding landscape for agriculture. The resulting campus is an expression of utopian architectural ambitions despite being constructed with modest means.

#Ghostlab cases free

The 72-foot barn contains an equipment shed and free stalls for horses, while creating a second working courtyard. The 90-foot long, metal clad studio is dominated by a 40-foot worktable and a 72-foot totemic cedar cabinet. Each of the cabins is a 700 square foot, two-bedroom structure comprised of a “servant’ box and a “served” shed, clad in eastern cedar shingles. The studio and four cabins inside the fence are heated structures on concrete foundations. The tower, which marks the south corner of the courtyard, and the barn are sited just outside the fence and are built on wood post foundations. They both provide accommodation for the program and a venue for community events.Įach component started as a two-week project from design to foundation to sheathing. The permanent structures which now occupy Shobac Campus among the ruins – tower, studio, cabins, and barn – are, in part, products of the design/build curriculum itself. Today, Shobac Campus is the centre of a community and way of working that holds at its core the values gleaned from Ghost: that of collaboration, economy as ethic, and the critical study of vernacular building practice.

The spirit of collaboration and community engagement born from Ghost has given way to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Ghost Lab continued for twelve successive years, culminating in an international conference that brought together builders, architects, students, and the local community. The development began as Ghost Design/Build Laboratory in 1994, when Brian, frustrated with the state of architectural education, pulled his Dalhousie University students out of the school for a two-week design/build. It hosted students from all corners of the globe for hands-on design and build projects, which were informed by the reading of landscape and embraced material culture. Brian MacKay-Lyons’ independently organized Ghost Laboratory is an architectural education centre in the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin or Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio.