Brian MacKay-Lyons is the founding partner of MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, a professor at Dalhousie University, and the founder of Ghost Lab – the now legendary 2-week summer design/build program that took place on his family farm in Nova Scotia from 1994 to 2011. While relentlessly local, Brian’s work has been recognized internationally with more than 100 awards, 300 publications, and 100 exhibitions. In 2012, the American Institute of Architects recognized the collective work and influence of Ghost with an Institute Honor Award for Architecture. 

Keith:      So what do you think the education and the architect ought to look like?

Brian:     Well, what I don’t think it needs to look like is an all design/build curriculum. I guess I have also learned that it has its limitations, like everything. One reason that Ghost has taken this hiatus is because I realized that I was being insincere.

I believe an architect’s role is not to be the builder. The architect’s role — like a conductor’s role in an orchestra — is not to be the first violinist either. I learned at Ghost that because I’m not a builder, I would volunteer for really dumb jobs on the site like driving spikes or carrying lumber. It was only when I was doing something not very challenging craft wise that I had the distance from the coal face that I think an architect needs to have to be the architect. I also learned in practice that contractors aren’t happier if you start to act like a builder and start telling them where to pile the lumber or how to do things. I found that what works best in the construction industry is, when the builder asks you a question, to say you don’t know the answer. Then the builder can be the builder and their experience is then something you can learn from.

I think both in practice and education, the architect is like Chauncey Gardiner in the movieBeing There, when he said, “I like to watch.” I think that is what architects do, they watch. So I think there is a romance around design/build that is a little bit misleading. However, I also think that it is really essential. Like in The Fountain Head, it’s essential to have the experience of building in your education or in your practice. Rick Joy built the first six houses he did, but that was it.

The reason to have had the Ghost Lab is for architects to learn humility, so that they don’t become the asshole architects on the site telling the builders what to do and not respecting them.

There are countless stories at Ghost. My favorite stories are when the architects and the people with Ph. D.’s and the engineers had it all wrong, and some guy who didn’t even go to high school just makes them look really dumb. <all laugh> It is a wonderful experience.

So really Ghost was about humility. Realizing that builders are really smart in a different kind of way than us and that we would do well to listen.

The full interview can be found here.