House on the hill: in pursuit of a plain architecture suited to an austere landscape, this house is honed to formal essence.Brian MacKay-Lyons has become known as the originator of a form of Nova Scotian minimalism minimalism, schools of contemporary art and music, with their origins in the 1960s, that have emphasized simplicity and objectivity. Minimalism in the Visual Arts in which details are pared to a minimum and forms are made as simply as possible (AR November 1990, May 1993 and July 2001). Working largely with traditional materials, MacKay-Lyons has drawn on the local vernacular of barns and fishermen's huts to create a dignified and honed architecture that sometimes seems almost monumental. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It is also inspired by the austere nature of the landscape that still very clearly shows its making in the last ice age. The Hill House is the latest in a series of domestic works (including MacKay-Lyons's farm) on the Kingsburg Peninsula in south Nova Scotia. Here, a drumlin drumlin (drŭm`lĭn), smooth oval hill of glacial drift, elongated in the direction of the movement of the ice that deposited it. Drumlins, which may be more than 150 ft (45 m) high and more than 1-2 mi (. , an oval mound smooth-sculpted by glaciers, rises to give an uninterrupted panorama of sea, fields and forests from its grassy crown. The new building is boldly set on this meadow, from which it now seems to have grown. Accommodation has been divided into two wedges that stand at each end of a court. Their sharp ends look at each other over the outdoor space, which itself is formed by quite low precast concrete walls. The plan is joggled so that these walls do not connect the blocks, but define the court and allow it to connect to the now apparently untouched meadow that surrounds the place. Blunt ends of the wedges rise sheer but slightly battered against the slopes on each side of the drumlin, allowing for two floors of accommodation inside. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One wedge is a good deal bigger than the other: this is the house itself. The other wedge contains a barn and guest rooms. For a building that seems pretty impenetrable from the outside, living spaces offer splendid views of land and water. In the case of the house, these are enhanced by carving a long verandah over a deck into its west side. Verandah connects to the covered deck on the court side of the wedge, creating further spatial and visual links between contained and free open space. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Verandahs and interior spaces have ceilings of tongue and grooved hemlock hemlock, any tree of the genus Tsuga, coniferous evergreens of the family Pinaceae (pine family) native to North America and Asia. The common hemlock of E North America is T. boards. Other materials are chosen from a very restricted range. Floors are polished concrete which contains radiant heating pipes. Joinery joinery, craft of assembling exposed woodwork in the interiors of buildings. Where carpentry refers to the rougher, simpler, and primarily structural elements of wood assembling, joinery has to do with difficult surfaces and curvatures, such as those of spiral is of maple with butcher-block counter tops and soapstone soapstone or steatite (stē`ətīt), metamorphic rock of which the characteristic and usually chief mineral is talc, but which also contains varying parts of chlorite, mica, tremolite, quartz, magnetite, and iron work surfaces. Externally, the roofs of the simple unelaborated forms are clad in standing seam metal, while the walls are clad in white cedar white cedar In the lumber trade, the American arborvitae, some species of false cypress (genus Chamaecyparis) and McNab cypress, incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens), and California juniper, all in the cypress family. shingles shingles: see herpes zoster. shingles or herpes zoster Acute viral skin and nerve infection. Groups of small blisters appear along certain nerve segments, most often on the back, sometimes after a dull ache at the site; pain becomes each of which has 4in (100mm) exposed; corners are smoothly created with four layers of alternating shingles. Commercial aluminium window frames have been chosen so that they will eventually harmonize with the silver grey of the weathered shingles. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] By then, the pristine forms will seem almost like natural elements of the scraped topography. The skirts of the building will darken dark·en v. dark·ened, dark·en·ing, dark·ens v.tr. 1. a. To make dark or darker. b. To give a darker hue to. 2. To fill with sadness; make gloomy. 3. , gradually acquire a lichenous li·chen n. 1. A fungus, usually of the class Ascomycetes, that grows symbiotically with algae, resulting in a composite organism that characteristically forms a crustlike or branching growth on rocks or tree trunks. 2. coating and blend with the surrounding meadow. The garden will grow. The plain house will become a haven in the stark landscape. E. M. |
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