AUGUST 2014
H
business elite canada
5
low colleague and architect, Sweetapple, who
joined as a company partner in 2005. As they
say, ‘time flies when you’re having fun’. And
it has—three decades later MacKay-Lyons
Sweetapple has completed hundreds of local
and international projects of supreme qual-
ity and aesthetic wonder. The firm’s work has
been featured internationally in more than 300
publications and exhibitions.
Founder and company partner, BrianMacKay-
Lyons was Sweetapple’s professor at the School
of Architecture at Dalhousie University prior
to 2005 and a business partnership was later
struck as both discovered they shared many
common belief systems, similar inspirations in
the field, and the same values of quality, style
and commitment to excellence in architectural
design. Sweetapple later became an Adjunct
Professor in 1997 at Dalhousie University’s
School of Architecture and he is now a Profes-
sor of Practice as of last year. MacKay-Lyons,
has also been active at Dalhousie University as
a full professor for the past 30 years. Both pro-
fessional scholars have also given more than
200 public lectures on their architectural and
design work worldwide.
In the beginning of his career Sweetapple
completed a work term in Berlin and another
for a Japanese architectural company for eight
months before graduating and working for
KPMB Architects, one of Canada’s lead archi-
tectural studios founded in 1987 in Toronto.
That experience inspired his interest in pub-
lic scale architecture. One day he received a
call from his former professor asking him if he
could return to Halifax to work on the Com-
puter Science building at Dalhousie. At a young
age relatively fresh out of Architectural school
Project: Cliff House
Photographer: Greg Richardson