Energy efficient architecture made with local materials has always been around since the beginning of construction.  Civilizations have always designed and built in response to their environment to make their daily lives more comfortable. Before the 1900’s, when alternating current became wide spread, all buildings were ‘off the electric grid’ and without air-conditioning.  So, before the 1900’s most buildings would have been considered ‘Green Buildings’, ‘Sustainable’, or ‘Carbon Neutral’ by today’s buzzword standards.  Things went awry in the United States when buildings designed for natural ventilation were retrofitted with central air-conditioning.  The buildings envelopes could not contain the conditioned air and became ‘energy hogs’.  The design response in the 60’s – 80’s was to tighten and insulate the new building envelope to create an engineered sealed box and ignore the natural environment.  While maintaining the interior temperature comfort of the occupants this design approach created the new problem of building related illness.  The EPA defines Sick Building Syndrome as “Term that refers to a set of symptoms that affect some number of building occupants during the time they spend in the building and diminish or go away during periods when they leave the building.”  In the 1990’s extensive studies were conducted on indoor air quality and modern construction’s impact on the environment.  Multiple design performance standards and guidelines were created by various government agencies, trade associations, and non-profit agencies.  In 1994 the Green Building Council began to develop the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system to provide an organized way to determine which standards should be used with various building types and also assigned a point rating system to the various standards to evaluate their impact on the environment.  The expensive new green building technology grabs the news, however just about any well designed building can meet the basic LEED certification without exotic technology.  Also, a misunderstanding about green building is that buildings cannot be designed to be more energy efficient and environmentally friendly without the additional cost of being submitted for LEED certification.  Most of our clients are not concerned with the marketing potential of LEED certification of their buildings, but are interested in inexpensively cutting their long-term energy and maintenance cost with proper building design.  Finally an additional misunderstanding is an energy efficient building has to look like something from the future.  As mentioned earlier prior to the 1960’s buildings responded to their environmental context to keep their occupants comfortable in an energy efficient manner.

Belek Golf Club is currently under construction on 840 beautiful acres in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains of Southern Turkey.  In May, 2009 sales will begin for the luxury Golf Resort with 2,400 Residential units, Reception, a Boutique Hotel over Galleria retail, a Turkish Spa and a 30,000 s.f. Clubhouse.

A world-renowned, hall-of fame golfer, Jose Maria Olazabel has designed the centerpiece course as a figure “8” which accommodates the signature, architectural feature of 24, 12,000 s.f. Castle units.  These special units are 4-storey but appear to be a castellated hill town rising out of a 25 ft. rocky crag in the middle of the golf course.

With the exception of the Castle Units, all cars are parked at the Reception Building in a 500 car subterranean parking garage.  Transportation around the site is by two-way canal barge, a network of electric buses or individual NEV’s or Segways.

The perimeter transportation canal necessitates a flat site yet GBA, EDSA and Olazabel Design have worked closely to create interesting topography.  In order to meet Turkey’s strict environmental requirements and to maintain water quality, the design team has used the design of the golf course to introduce marsh areas which aerate continuously circulated water.

This project has generated great interest throughout Turkey, Europe and the World Golfing Community.  The Architect’s design package has been translated into a C.G. animation by AlphaVision in Montreal.

Michael Johnston is larger than life and a great friend of this office.  I met Michael and his lovely wife Jennifer at the Old Course Hotel in St. Andrews over a decade ago.  Due North of St. Andrews and seldom visible through the mist is the small town of Carnoustie and Carnoustie had a colossal problem looming.  With arguably the most difficult golf course in the World and booked to host the 1999 Open Championship, Carnoustie had no hotel or serious accommodations in place.  Enter Michael Johnston, favorite son of Dundee and a rare, successful Scottish entrepreneur who had chosen to remain in Scotland instead of galavanting down to London.  Michael was the only person within a thousand miles of Carnoustie with any chance of developing a signature hotel in time but nobody seemed to give him a chance.  In fact, I had the feeling that he was going to be a sacrificial lamb to shoulder the blame and perhaps save some faces to the East of the most famous first tee in Golf.  Michael ran the show with military precision and a little help from some friends and Carnoustie got its Hotel two weeks before Paul Laurie left the Frenchman up to his knees in the 18th. byrne.  A memorable Open and a memorable man.  Michael Johnston has included GBA in many subsequent projects all around the World, the latest being a smart little hotel in Broughty Ferry, Scotland.

Everyone in our office uses Autodesk Revit Architecture, from concept design through production. It’s office predecessor, AutoCAD, has drifted by the wayside like other relics of the digital age. Revit gives us the ability to design in three dimensions, view from all angles, and produce fantastic renderings to illustrate our designs.

When it is time to produce construction documents, the power of Revit allows us to generate plans, elevations, and schedules straight from the model. The result is improved accuracy and a guarantee to the client that the final building will look just like the rendering that was approved during concept stages.

Revit, however, is a tool like any other in that the quality of the final product is related to the expertise of the hands using the tool. For this reason we are constantly training, working out new solutions, and improving our Revit skills. We also create our own custom libraries for use in the models to maintain design integrity to the smallest detail.

Even though the work is created digitally, the most important factors, human creativity and ingenuity, govern the final designs, with the client’s successful project the ultimate goal.