SHOBAC BOATHOUSE

Ghost Laboratory is a Design and Build two-week education center that invites architecture students globally to participate in a hands-on design-to-foundation project led by regionalist architect Brian MacKay-Lyons on his property, Shobac Campus, in Nova Scotia. The objective of the curriculum is to teach students the necessary and critical skills of studio collaboration and technical construction required to move design from “paper architecture” to the built environment.

Twenty students were chosen to join Ghost 12 in 2010, and guest architect Peter Stutchbury of Australia co-hosted students, bringing his own regionalist expertise to the lab. 

Our group would spend the first week designing a boathouse with respect to local Nova Scotian legacy and the fishing industry, design vernacular, and environmental conditions. We collaborated on concept sketches, engineering, construction details, and project scheduling before spending our second week building our design on campus. 

The Shobac Boathouse project started and was completed in June of 2010.