Founded in Toronto in 2018 by Wei-Han Vivian Lee (1977, Taipei, Taiwan) and James Macgillivray (1976, Toronto, Canada), the Lamas practice effectively represents the trend among architects to distance themselves from the pure formal work that preceded them throughout the course of the past century in order to concentrate on issues that are now central in architectural design, namely materials and finishes. Similar principles, universally codified in a meta-design method called Colour Material Finish (CMF) design, are being taken up in an architectural key, incorporating macro-themes such as building type, which was pervasively explored in the late 20th-century notably by the Italian precursors Aldo Rossi and Saverio Muratori.

Along these lines, work by Lamas features experiments such as Hair, Spikes, Cattail, Turkeyfoot (2011), a construction model that combines two discordant techniques, a digitally cut weight-bearing structure in steel and traditional insulation in reeds, to produce a temporary pavilion in the botanical gardens of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Similarly, Lamas is now busy turning an old A & P supermarket in Toronto into Avling Brewery by applying to the existing shell solutions and technology borrowed from local agriculture (2019).

But it is in the design of Townships Farmhouse in Hatley, Quebec (2017) that architecture is redefined in its own specificity under an approach devoid of formalism. The type of homestead found in these parts since the mid 20th-century, an agglomerate of barns laid out around a court, was repurposed to create a complex that optimises the flow of people and livestock while sheltering them from the wind. The cladding is salvaged wood from demolished barns, giving body to an organism that does not act on the physical characteristics of the material, but on architecture’s specific capacity of regeneration, creating a pure aesthetic.