They say some people find what they were born to do, and Myles Burry can attest to that. The Wesleyville native is an artist and designer who visualizes Newfoundland traditional spaces and reinvents them into modern structures.
Myles holds a Bachelor of Technology from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a Bachelor of Environmental Design Studies and Master of Architecture from Dalhousie University. After he graduated, he moved to Toronto for three years to work with Batay-Csorba Architects, a small firm doing mainly smaller custom residential homes. Myles now finds himself in Norway working with Saunders Architecture, run by Todd Saunders who built the famous Fogo Island Inn.
When it comes to architecture, there is a tendency for folks outside of the field to simplify it as drawings of buildings, but it’s a million different things.
“You could be someone who creates technical drawings, you could be someone who manages specifications for the build or you could be someone who is managing the project and talking with the client. Or you could be a designer, which is what everyone hopes to do but that can be difficult,” explained Myles.
Luckily for Myles, he finds himself on the design side of things. It’s only himself and few co-workers in the Sauders office in Norway and he is currently working on a schematic design for a new project. Even during his time in Toronto, he considers himself lucky because he was getting to design a lot of stuff.
Myles has made a mark in Newfoundland too. Before heading to Toronto, Myles and his friend Sarah Reid redesigned the REACH: Bonavista North Museum and Gallery located in his hometown of Wesleyville. In 2022 the REACH earned a Southcott Award for Design in Context.
“It was an old building that was in decay for the most part. It features an art gallery, workspaces for creatives and a new lobby,” said the designer. “You have to ask what do I add to the profession? How do I make something interesting? For me that’s a very personal experience, making my own piece of art that happens to be a building.”
The REACH is a visual testimony to the traditional architecture of rural Newfoundland, with Myles influence and modern approach intertwined within. Lathered in soft pinks and mints, similar to old outport stations, Myles used visuals of the province’s history in a beautiful display.
Myles started researching traditional Newfoundland buildings for his thesis project and he also worked at the Heritage Foundation in Newfoundland at one point and saw a lot of old buildings and learned a lot about them—but he noticed aspects were missing historically.
“So I started to look at the history of Newfoundland and look at its built culture, and there wasn’t anything reflective of queer culture. That is not specific to Newfoundland, queer people for the most part have been an underground society and their architecture is more ephemeral, like meeting in a particular place or using an old space. So for my Masters thesis, I asked myself ‘how do I make queer Newfoundland architecture?’”
Myles looked at queer history in Newfoundland and the idea of space in the province, particularly the idea of masculine space and feminine space.
“The idea of how women make space and how men make space and how they are divided and the type of buildings they make. When you look at the structure of how people settled, you got married, you have children, and your children grow up and build a house next to you. And the community built buildings used to harvest fish,” said Myles. “It was a social structure reflected in the architecture. How do I take this existing structure and make a mess of it and make it inclusive of queer people?”
Myles decided to take a look at mummering—a tradition that plays with gender roles and can be seen as a form of drag.
“It messes with gendered clothing and changing of appearances and a sense of putting on a costume to neutralize, or disrupt social order. You were able to do things that you wouldn’t typically do. Even historically, people used mummering as a way to get back at merchants and of course it’s super symbolic of being a Newfoundlander,” said Myles. “I looked at the costumes as a way of distorting space.”
Myles looked at the different aspects of the Mummers costume. First there is exaggeration, where they change the shape of their body. Then there is collage, the idea of wearing both men and women’s clothing and then the mask used as costume. Myles then used those elements to create architecture.
Myles took a traditional Newfoundland building and exaggerated it by adding a secondary piece, flipping it or shifting it a different way. Collage could be created by taking two buildings and smashing them together or mixing different materials together.
“If you think of a shed, it’s traditionally a man’s space with bare wood, there isn’t a desire to be aesthetically pleasing. A traditional women’s space has wallpapers and colours and very fine details. So collaging is taking these two aesthetics and mashing them together.”
For masking Myles used fabric in the architecture and played with translucency of glass being frosted and the idea that you can’t see through it.
With all these elements, Myles designed a pool and spa. After pinpointing all the hockey rinks in central Newfoundland and one swimming pool, he recognized a need for this type of architecture.
He planned a project on a historic building site in Newtown to take inspiration from the surrounding buildings but also asked how he could disrupt the flow of the site.
“I created four buildings that are a youth camp, three are cabins and there is a common space. Then there were bathing buildings, a sauna, a hot tub and a bigger pool and spa. There is also a crafting space. The intent is to get youth into this area to learn traditional Newfoundland crafts and not just for traditions sake. The people who made those things were really smart and worked for years to create a specific style and way of doing things and we can learn from them and apply it to the future. I am trying to do that for architecture but I think that works for anything: music, textiles, food.”
This project is not built but it’s Myles voice in architecture.
“This is a hyper specific project that is never going to work because no one is going to invest in it but I learned a lot of what I like aesthetically and how I would go about designing something.”
Myles learned his colour scheme by looking at the language of colours used historically in the province and how they communicate with people.
“People can look at a building and understand it in a particular way. For me, if I want to communicate with people through architecture with a specific audience, they will understand that you’re speaking their language through colour,” he said.
Myles also makes beautiful paintings showing his perspective of home with nostalgia and modern aspect interlaying on top of historical and traditional features. He took a painting class at the Art Gallery of Ontario and worked on paintings during his own time and went from there.
“It’s a process of getting to something you are happy with, then refining and constantly working on it. Architecture and art are intertwined and I am exploring the same themes and ideas.”
Myles studied many artists including David Blackwood of Wesleyville, Matthew Wong, David Hockney and Maude Lewis to help him gauge his aesthetic.
“Blackwood depicts Wesleyville in a lot of his paintings and they have a very specific style. They are somber and show the harsh hardships of people who lived through early Newfoundland settlement. I have always been inspired by him, for me they are paintings that depict my home but it’s not what the place means to me.”
Myles’ paintings show his childhood experiences during the late 1990s in rural Newfoundland. Splash ‘n Putt bumper boats, gaming consoles against wallpapered walls, and traditional churches lined against an Ultramar gas station, for example.
“There is this romantic idea of saltbox houses with clothes on the line, that I wanted infused with pop culture and low class buildings and what it was like to live in Wesleyville during my childhood.”
In June, Myles will be returning home to do an artist residency in Port Union.
Check out Myles work here
You can find his instagram here
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