Andrea Stenson

Firm name: LAMAS (Lee and Macgillivray Architecture Studio)
Location: Toronto
Year founded: 2008
Firm leadership: WH Vivian Lee and James Macgillivray
Education: Lee: B.A. Wesleyan University, M.Arch. Harvard University Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD); Macgillivray: B.Arch. Princeton University, M.Arch. Harvard GSD
Experience: Lee: LTL Architects, SHoP Architects; Macgillivray: Steven Holl Architects, GLUCK+
How founders met: Architecture school
Firm size: Four to six

This 4,000-square-foot North Hatley, Quebec, farmhouse comprises three distinct volumes clad in repurposed hemlock sourced from dilapidated barns in Ontario.
Stephane Groleau This 4,000-square-foot North Hatley, Quebec, farmhouse comprises three distinct volumes clad in repurposed hemlock sourced from dilapidated barns in Ontario.
Stephane Groleau
Stephane Groleau

Mission:
We’re excited by ornament, optical illusions, and lazy forms. Our ideas usually involve the perversion of a precedent, type, or technique. We do research, installations, and work for clients. We respect every situation that allows us to do our work and see each one as a distinct calling for our expertise.

Memorable learning experience:
We learned how to thatch from William Cahill, one of the last master thatchers in the United States. Most projects involve learning some kind of craft tradition whether old or new—for example, when we learned hydrographics, it was mostly from YouTube.

First commission:
We worked with poet Tung-Hui Hu at the University of Michigan on a structure to house the poetry he was writing with voice recognition software of people answering the question “when was the last time you cried?” We built the installation "Last Time You Cried" out of extruded sound waves from his voice recordings, simply in florist foam. Early on, this got us interested in artificial intelligence, but also in expedient ways of producing ornament and space.

Favorite project:
“Delirious Facade”, probably because it is our most recent. We’re using the artificial intelligence of Google’s Deep Dream to design facades based on jpegs of existing buildings. We love it because we can get a lot done with very little work. It also invites a historical diversity of formal and ornamental languages into our process that might not be there otherwise. This is really important to us, particularly as it relates to the diverse city where we live. So we can design facades that aren’t collage (like “facadism”), or universal techno, but rather a kind of bouillabaisse, which is what Toronto should be, but isn’t.

LAMAS used Google’s convolutional neural network software Deep Dream on its Delirious Facade research project to create hybrid façades of Toronto structures. This exploration stems from ongoing debates on the lack of historic buildings in Toronto, diminished identity, and shifting structural appearances.
LAMAS LAMAS used Google’s convolutional neural network software Deep Dream on its Delirious Facade research project to create hybrid façades of Toronto structures. This exploration stems from ongoing debates on the lack of historic buildings in Toronto, diminished identity, and shifting structural appearances.
LAMAS

Second favorite project:
“Mototonne Barchessa.” This was an early project we did for James’ cousin in the Marches in Italy. We discovered the barchessa as a type and came up with a design that was both contextual and typologically inventive.

Origin of firm name:
It’s actually just a boring acronym of Lee and Macgillivray Architecture Studio. But people think our name is all kinds of things: a South American animal, or Lorenzo Lamas, or two Tibetan monks. For some reason everyone says it with a Spanish accent.

Inspired by Chinese rice grain porcelain, Lee and Macgillivray pressed coffered shapes into the interior of a ceramic lampshade prototype called Pantheon (left). This treatment creates varying levels of translucency in the material.
LAMAS Inspired by Chinese rice grain porcelain, Lee and Macgillivray pressed coffered shapes into the interior of a ceramic lampshade prototype called Pantheon (left). This treatment creates varying levels of translucency in the material.

Design hero:
Adelbert Ames Jr. was famous for inventing several optical illusions to test visual perception, most notably the Ames Room. But he made many others that dealt with normative architectural forms as something to measure against (windows, chairs, doors). His constructions presage the early work of Frank Gehry, FAIA, in interesting ways.

Modern-day design hero:
Zeitguised.com—founded by architect Henrik Mauler and sculpture and fashion design Jamie Raap. Just go check them out, and you’ll know why.

Special item in your studio space:
Spouse

Conceptualized as an urban iceberg, the firm’s “Underberg” runner-up proposal for the 2014 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program incorporates contrasting curved and angular Tyvek forms suspended from 50-foot poles to create a cavernous, yet open, space, enlivened by colorful marble patterns.
Courtesy LAMAS Conceptualized as an urban iceberg, the firm’s “Underberg” runner-up proposal for the 2014 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program incorporates contrasting curved and angular Tyvek forms suspended from 50-foot poles to create a cavernous, yet open, space, enlivened by colorful marble patterns.
LAMAS

Design tool of choice:
Pinterest

Design aggravation:
Glass and balconies. Where we live it’s enough already.

When we're not working in architecture, we:
Watch TV. Go to the playground.

Seeking to evoke a classic one-room schoolhouse, the design for this Brooklyn, N.Y., bookstore includes arched and quarter-arched cutouts inspired by Shaker stepladders and hidden pops of color in the shelving.
Left: LAMAS Seeking to evoke a classic one-room schoolhouse, the design for this Brooklyn, N.Y., bookstore includes arched and quarter-arched cutouts inspired by Shaker stepladders and hidden pops of color in the shelving.

Superstitions:
Never write your name in red ink. Don’t give knives or scissors as a present.

Skills to master:
Magic eye.

Morning person or night owl?
Both

Stacked cube, sphere, and prism forms assemble to create an atypical food cart for Toronto restaurant Oyster Boy for the 2015 Stop’s Night Market. Embellished using water transfer printing called hydrographics, the cart won “best in show.”
Courtesy LAMAS Stacked cube, sphere, and prism forms assemble to create an atypical food cart for Toronto restaurant Oyster Boy for the 2015 Stop’s Night Market. Embellished using water transfer printing called hydrographics, the cart won “best in show.”
LAMAS

Social media platform of choice:
Instagram

Vice:
Looking at phone after midnight.