SkyRoom: The Journey of Brian And Marilyn Mackay-Lyons at Shobac, a Seaside Village on the Edge of Architectural and Utopian Possibility

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In SkyRoom, novelist Larry Gaudet tells the story of Shobac, a seaside village recognized internationally as the masterwork of famed Canadian architect Brian Mackay-Lyons.

In partnership with his wife Marilyn Mackay-Lyons and their family, he has built a unique community over the granite ruins of a historic settlement on the fogbound coast of Nova Scotia. Among the structures at Shobac are homes, barns, studios, cottages, fishing shacks, a boathouse, even a schoolhouse, all designed in Mackay-Lyonss compelling architectural language that fuses contemporary Modernism with Nova Scotia building traditions.

SkyRoom is written in a new genre that Gaudet calls magic architectural realism, blending fact with historical fiction in presenting the lives of early inhabitants and visitors to the Shobac area, including Samuel de Champlain, a Mikmaq mystic, an Acadian carpenter and other lively characters whose ghostly presence swirl in the untold myths of this coastal Shangri-La. More provocatively, Gaudet orchestrates imaginary conversations between Mackay-Lyons and legendary figures in architecture Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore and others all towards providing a novel perspective on what goes into building communities and homes worth living in.

Reviews

"A [writer] so laden with vision and ideas and cultural insights and
narrative experiment that I fell to the floor and cried for mama." --Quill
& Quire

"The exact nature of what
this estimable writer offers matters less than the fact that he offers it at
all - intelligently, vulnerably, often poetically." --The Globe &
Mail

Author Bio

Larry Gaudet has published six books, including two non-fiction bestsellers for Random House and several works of fiction. Praised as an heir to McLuhan Gaudet is known for inventive satires of transnational corporate culture. His scriptwriting includes projects with Universal Cable, NBC and various Los Angeles producers. His corporate work over 25+ years spans branding, venture financing, speechwriting, investor relations and marketing. He has been a partner in a contemporary art gallery. He has received Canadas highest journalism awards and recognition from branding juries internationally. His community work includes providing strategic counsel to Doctors Without Borders (MSF Geneva), the Kingsburg Coastal Conservancy, an art education and therapy institute in Hangzhou, China, and the Art Canada Institute based in Toronto.