Dualchas Building Design

From Tokavaig to Nova Scotia

Admittedly there’s a bit of a dearth of cheer on this year’s seasonal front, but there are a few positives around well worth highlighting. The first is the hour-long programme broadcast this week on a completely obscure Sky channel about the construction of the Shed at Tokavaig, Mary Arnold Forster’s house on Skye. Mary, for those of you foolish enough not to memorise the contents of each week’s Wrap, is the member of Dualchas I reported on a couple of months ago who has the energy to kayak to site meetings on nearby islands. Mary took some serious ribbing from her partners on that one but I think it would be hard for the twins to be churlish this time about her well-deserved 60 minutes of fame.

Actually, it’s not just Mary’s house that made the programme a treat – part of the film captured her meeting with Brian Mackay-Lyons in Nova Scotia and visiting some of his fabulous houses. For those of you who don’t know about Brian’s work and who’ve missed his inspirational lectures on the two occasions in recent years when he’s managed to interrupt his busy schedule to visit Scotland - believe me you’ve missed out big style. It’s not often you get two outstandingly good architects together on the box, even if the programme itself needed the skills of Poirot to track down. Perhaps we should all lobby Rupert Murdoch to put the programme out again on a more easily accessible channel; for her part, Mary received a reasonable fee for having her house featured plus she got a free trip to Nova Scotia. All in all, not a bad deal for the lady in the kayak.

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