FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Usually when you imagine students traveling abroad, you think of museums and cathedrals, not foundries, harbors or fish-processing plants. This semester, however, fourth- and fifth-year architecture students from the University of Arkansas School of Architecture visited Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in conjunction with John G. Williams Visiting Professor recipient Brian MacKay-Lyons.

"The students needed to understand the context from which the architecture evolves," said Tim de Noble, assistant professor of architecture.

Together with Julieanna Preston, associate professor of architecture, and their students, de Noble traveled to Canada in January. The two professors, along with MacKay-Lyons, have designed a studio in which the students develop an urban design based on their study and understanding of both ship construction and Lunenburg's unique grid and architecture.

"Lunenburg sits proudly on one of the many geological drumlins of the glacial moraine of Nova Scotia," Preston said.

Founded in 1753, Lunenburg is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a "significant town architecturally, urbanistically, almost entirely wood," said de Noble.

It is also the home to the Lunenburg Foundry, which "occupies a pivotal site at the apex of the harbor," said Preston.

Once at the Lunenburg Foundry, students toured the facility, which de Noble said is a "two-part business: ship building and repair on one part of the harbor, and then at the other end is the foundry."

At the other end of the peninsula sits a six-acre site, owned by the foundry. Located near the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), this site is the proposed space for the students' urban-design project.

Director of NSCAD Paul Greenhaugh, formerly the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, is considering this location for a "satellite school facility," according to Preston.

The hypothetical project poses a conundrum for the students: what are the possibilities when art education and manufacturing share a common location and goal?

Their designs, already under progress, will speculate the future growth of the town while also considering how to arrange space according to the ocean-based land and commerce. Ultimately, their urban design, to be completed by the end of the semester, will combine design with industry, or a "symbiosis" of two programs, Noble said.

"Art is not exhibited but functional and lived in," he said. "This hypothetical project combines the two, but it's not really out of the question. Our results may never come to any fruition, but they will certainly promulgate ideas about how you might combine the two in the future."

This year's John G. Williams Visiting Professor recipient Brian MacKay-Lyons initiated the urban-design project. Born in Arcadia, a village in southwest Nova Scotia, MacKay-Lyons studied in Halifax before receiving his graduate degree at UCLA, where he studied under Charles Moore, designer of the Burns House and Hood Museum of Art. In 1983 he returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he practices in his firm Brian MacKay-Lyons Architecture Urban Design. His built designs are featured in the book Brian MacKay-Lyons, published by Tuns Press (1998).

MacKay-Lyons believes that "each project is particular to its program and place," perhaps why it was necessary for students to travel to the exact location and understand the culture and place.

In his book, MacKay-Lyons compares anthropology to architecture. It reads, "Like the anthropologist who studies ordinary pots and pans, if one believes that culture derives from the everyday rather than the unique, then as a designer one is drawn to everyday things as a way of understanding the relationship between architecture and culture."

Throughout the semester, MacKay-Lyons "arrives periodically to meet with the students, conduct critiques and give topical lectures," said de Noble.

Sitting at a long table in the fifth-year studio, MacKay-Lyons was surrounded by students, their models and posters depicting Lunenburg architecturally. Kyle Cook of Fayetteville, Ricky Fulks of Quitman, Jonathan Opitz of Benton, B.J. Phillips of Bentonville, Tim Maddox of Fayetteville and Muna Billeh of Beirut listened as MacKay-Lyons stressed the relationship between convention and invention.

"If you make a wall section, you'll always learn something," MacKay-Lyons said. "The Classicists believe there are no new stories to be told, no new lessons to be learned, and invention derives only when convention falls short."

Through the ordinary and mundane—tasks like building a wall detail—his students will be forced to create new designs.

His visits to the University are tentatively scheduled for March 11-12, April 2-3, April 16-17 and May 1-2.

The John G. Williams Visiting Professor was established in 1993 by the School of Architecture in honor of its founder, John G. Williams. Previous recipients include Peter Eisenman, Edward Durell Stone Jr., Chris Risher and Maurizio Ranzi.

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