Local Architecture: Building Place, Craft, and Community

In 1994, “frustrated with the state of architectural education,” McKay-Lyons, then a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, took a group of his students to a remote corner of Nova Scotia for an internship program to reinforce “students’ sound intuition that architecture has always been about landscape, making, and community.” The program became the Ghost Architecture Laboratory, and this book gives a taste of the institution’s culminating event: Ghost 13, a conference/reunion of architects, historians, and students devoted to “ideas in things.” The book includes photographs of the participants’ work, essays on the significance of the event, and keynote speeches by Kenneth Frampton, Glenn Murcott, and Juhani Pallasmaa—the last of whom argues that Le Corbusier’s house-as-machine needs to be replaced with biological models and that we need a “new concept of beauty… the beauty of human reason and ethics.” Although those unfamiliar with these architects may find the minimal descriptions of their projects, which make up the bulk of the book, exasperatingly uninformative, this document records an important moment in architectural history that will be of interest to professionals—and anyone concerned with the future of architecture, its revitalization, and its relevance to the most pressing issues of our time. (Jan.)