“The Shobac” refers to the adjacent high cliffs (called a ‘conspicuous bank’ by mariners) at the LaHave River estuary on Nova Scotia’s Atlantic coast. A seasonal settlement for millennia for Indigenous Mi'kmaq, a place for early French fishermen to dry their catch, an Acadian settlement in the early 1600s, and a foreign protestant settlement in the 1750’s; this land has had a long, fitful history of settlement, with farmlands giving way to forests and back again. All builders believed that they were building for so called ‘permanence’. This landscape was re-cleared again from forest by the architect over the past 25 years, revealing its historic ruins and its 400 years of agrarian history.

The Ghost Lab has since 1994 been an architectural education centre in the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, or Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio. Most of the permanent structures which now occupy the site among the ruins – tower, studio, cabins, barns and boathouse – are products of the design/build curriculum itself. The ‘permanent’ structures provided infrastructure for the Ghost Lab, which reached a hiatus in 2011, culminating in an international conference “Ideas in Things” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014, Local Architecture). Each component started as a two-week project; from design, to foundation, to framing, to sheathing. They provide accommodation for Ghost and a venue for community events. Ghost Laboratory has influenced the international discourse about architectural education, and has inspired numerous design/build programs around the world.

The resulting campus is an expression of utopian architectural ambitions, an argument for landscape stewardship through agricultural/architectural cultivated. Despite being constructed with modest means, where extremely modest frugal buildings form positive courtyards, or microclimates between, a whole created which is greater than the sum of its parts. As Alvar Aalto has said “All architecture is a search for paradise on earth”. From an environmental perspective, the campus is a relatively dense compound, conserving the surrounding landscape for agriculture. The courtyards make south-facing microclimates complimenting the passive solar structures. All structures are constructed of local technology and local renewable materials from nearby sawmills. The courtyards refer both to the environmental common sense of the simple barnyard, and a proto-urban aspiration. By ‘listening’ to the site’s rich history and local material cultural traditions, yet ‘willing’ buildings which are clearly modern, the Ghost Lab is a built critical regionalist argument.

Shobac Campus comprises a collection of projects individually credited in this section. The campus design is the result of many years of design exploration through the work of the Ghost Lab and the work of MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. In addition to all participants of the Ghost Lab throughout the years credit must also be extended to Marilyn MacKay-Lyons and the MacKay-Lyons family, friends and greater Kingsburg community who have contributed so much to this place and continue to be its stewards today.

If you would like to stay at Shobac, please inquire here.

Architect
‍Brian MacKay-Lyons
‍
Guest Architects
Bob Benz, Francis Kéré, Rick Joy, Marlon Blackwell, Ted Flato, Peter Stutchbury, Deborah Berke, Juhani Pallasmaa, Wendell Burnette, David Miller

Guest Critics
Robert Ivy, Kenneth Frampton, Tom Fisher, Robert McCarter, Juhani Pallasmaa, Peter Buchanan, Suzanne Stephens, Tom Peters, Ingerid Helsing-Almaas

Ghost Participants
Over 300 individuals