House on the hill: in pursuit of a plain architecture suited to an austere landscape, this house is honed to formal essence

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 2004

Brian MacKay-Lyons has become known as the originator of a form of Nova Scotian minimalism 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.

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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, 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.

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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.

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Verandahs and interior spaces have ceilings of tongue and grooved hemlock boards. Other materials are chosen from a very restricted range. Floors are polished concrete which contains radiant heating pipes. Joinery is of maple with butcher-block counter tops and soapstone work surfaces. Externally, the roofs of the simple unelaborated forms are clad in standing seam metal, while the walls are clad in white cedar shingles 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.

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By then, the pristine forms will seem almost like natural elements of the scraped topography. The skirts of the building will darken, gradually acquire a lichenous coating and blend with the surrounding meadow. The garden will grow. The plain house will become a haven in the stark landscape. E. M.