John Drake, AIA enabled Guy Butler Architect to win a 2009 Florida American Institute of Architects Award of Excellence for Africa Windmill Project. 

The actual windmill project was built in March 2009 when John Drake, vice president with GBA and Bill Salter, Senior Design Architect with GBA, went to Malawi Africa with two friends to build a windmill in the Village of Mgwayi.  The windmill was designed to be built out of locally found materials in a rural village to irrigate crops during the region’s punishing eight month dry season.

The idea for a sustainable windmill for the small farmer was conceived when John was in Malawi, Africa a year and a half ago, and noticed remote farming villages had hand-dug wells, with no means of pumping water.  During a drought Malawi does not produce enough food to support its population; 94% of farms rely on the natural three-month rainy season, which only allows one growing season per year.  Farmers, with Malawi’s temperate climate and the means to ‘pump’ water for crop irrigation, would have the opportunity to produce crops year round regardless of droughts.  Modern irrigation equipment is too expensive for villagers and impossible to maintain, since they do not have tools or training.  Most agriculture in Malawi is composed of individual subsistence farmers with small one acre farms. 

The design solution evolved over a year and a half of trial and error and is based upon the panemone windmill (500AD Persia) connected to a rope and washer pump.  This enables crop irrigation and only utilizes materials that are readily available in Malawi to the common farmer.  The windmill is made of a main wood post, bamboo, wire, grain sacks, and two stones for the main bearing; and the pump is made of rope, bottle caps, hand-cut rubber washers (out of used bicycle tubes), and PVC thin walled pipe.  The total cost for the windmill if all the parts are bought is $40 US dollars and it could irrigate a minimum of ¼ acre which yields $100-$125 US dollars at harvest, so within the first harvest the rural farmer will be able to make a profit.  Sustainable irrigation will stabilize the region of Southern Africa’s food supply which is a matter of Life and Death in Malawi.

Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, is one of the most vibrant cities in Europe.  The last ten years of peace have displaced the follies of “troubles” with a tight urban fabric of shops, bars, restaurants, hotels and very friendly people.

As a natural crossing place of the river, Belfast has always been confined within the Lagan Valley and the hills on either side.  Today, the city still does not stray too far from the bottom of that valley and clever planning has created long view corridors for the visitor to appreciate the green hills over the roofs of the architecture, most of which is still under 7 storeys and created during Belfast’s growth in Georgian and Victorian times.

But, the most exciting surprise greeting my return to Belfast after 35 years was the Belfast Metro tee-shirt given to me and my family by the Architect, Arthur Acheson.  Yes, a Metro, an Underground, a Subway, under the streets of Belfast.  First thoughts were, “No way!  Belfast is too compact!  What about the sleech?  Is traffic really that bad?”

I forgot who I was talking to.  Arthur Acheson is one of those rare souls who sees every question as a way to create an answer; every problem as a way to stimulate a solution.  I swear, if Arthur had been around at other times in history, he would have been the one to invent electricity or perhaps the jet engine.  A latter day Ben Franklin, he is thinking, thinking, thinking all the time.  We went to school together so I knew enough to sit back and let Arthur answer my doubting questions.

Arthur Acheson’s plan to build a Metro system under Belfast could be the blueprint for all cities interested in preparing for the future.  To get my initial questions out of the way in short order I was told:

“Belfast too compact?  Less Metro to build and open sooner!”

“What about the sleech, a soupy sub-soil that has always affected Belfast structures?  Other cities planned around rivers, such as London and Paris, have subway systems.”

“Is traffic that bad?  Just wait, it will be.  The new Titanic Quarter seems to have one way in and no way out.  A traffic nightmare waiting for all the residents to move in.”

The real magic about the Belfast Metro is how Arthur proposes the financing for the $600 million scheme.  He suggests bartering development rights with developers to allow them greater density if they pay for the leg before and the leg after their planned developments.  This is not a new idea.  Quite a few large North American cities ask developers to foot the bill for subterranean transportation so that people can move around in the severe winters.  Arthur was a professor at McGill University in Montreal.  Coincidence, I think not.  In fact to look over the skyline of Toronto, identifies the RT stations as clusters of growth.

Belfast hasn’t yet bought into the Metro proposal.  Very few cities would until the traffic situation gets so bad that an irate public demands it.  However, the opportunity of using development to put the infrastructure in place cannot happen early enough because surface traffic, with its associated pollution, traffic jams, lost time and tempers simply cannot compare to the clean and quiet way people move around with new, clean technology; Singapore would be a great point of reference.

I will be wearing my new Belfast Metro tee-shirt with pride and in the hope that 100 years from now, for more than any other reason Belfast will be remembered for showing the World the way to leap forward in clean transportation.

     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.