About MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects
MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The practice works locally and internationally on cultural, academic and residential projects, providing full architectural and interior design services. There are two Partners: Brian MacKay-Lyons and Talbot Sweetapple, one Managing Principal: Melanie Hayne, and one Design Associate: Shane Andrews.
In over 30 years of work, the practice has built an international reputation for design excellence confirmed by over 100 awards, including the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Gold Medal in 2015 and Firm Award in 2014, six Governor General Medals, two American Institute of Architects National Honor Awards of Architecture, thirteen Lieutenant Governor’s Medals of Excellence, eight Canadian Architect Awards, four Architectural Record Houses Awards, and ten North American Wood Design Awards. A fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (FRAIC), and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA), Brian MacKay-Lyons was named Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (Hon FAIA) in 2001 and most recently was made an International Fellow by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in London of this year. In addition, the firm’s work has been featured internationally in over 300 publications and 100 exhibitions.
LOCATION: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
LEARN MORE: mlsarchitects.ca
The East Dover House is perched high on a granite hilltop, overlooking a bay and the open sea, on Nova Scotia’s rugged Atlantic coast. The project touches the land lightly, pinned to the granite bedrock.
Tucked away behind the trees, the Chester house features a cedar platform that serves as a porch and or an outdoor room with no walls – an unusual, yet seemingly conventional element that establishes a domestic space within the landscape.
This is the first predesigned neighborhood to be built on Powder Mountain. It consists of 30 cabins which range in size from 1,000 to 2,500 square feet, a communal structure called the ‘Pioneer Cabin’ for the use of the homeowners …
Smith House is a vacation home located on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, adjacent to the architect’s farm (Shobac). The home consists of three pavilions on a two-acre site spanning from a salt pond on the east to bold oceanfront on the west.
The latest addition, Enough House, provides accommodation for an intern architect to work closely with MacKay-Lyons. The cabin is an essay in economy: space, budget, schedule and aesthetic. It shares the same minimalist ethic as the adjacent, 1830’s schoolhouse.
Mirror Point Cottage is a vacation home for a local fisherman’s daughter, her Dutch minimalist husband, and their two young children, on a lake near Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia.
