I aim to design buildings which not only really meet users' needs but in which people feel comfortable, and want to spend time. Listening carefully, and working with our clients and on their unique sites, is a skill. I have several decades of such experience in ecotecture, after completing studies in both architecture and engineering.
I've designed very many projects ranging from ecourbanism, dwellings and apartments, crèches to office buildings, facilities for elderly, even a micro hydropower plant in an old mill, for many diverse clients, sites and budgets.
Sustainable building is accepted now as the way of the future - I'm very happy to have been one of the pioneers of that in Ireland, and to have helped disseminate it all over the world, speaking in Europe, Africa, India, China, USA, Australia and Japan.
For decades people looked bemused, as I suggested passive solar, healthy building materials, of low embodied energy, multi-storey timber frame structures, low water use, low EMF, geothermal, wind, hydro, solar - thermal and photovoltaic. However, I would be concerned to see ugly buildings prioritising low energy / passive technical performance, which is simply not thorough enough. I believe in applying ecological architecture (ecotecture) principles and quantitative parameters. This is profoundly transformative. Quantitative approaches are incomplete; a necessary but insufficient methodology. Beauty is not just about looks but profound reality; it shows!
Ultimately, my aim is to bring spirit, insight, experience, intelligence and hopefully humour to bear in the indomitable hope and expectation that, despite the highly justifiable 'doomers and gloomers' out there, humankind can still, just about, 'turn this around' in time – we still can make the step-changes to a chain-reaction of hope and resurgence, a 'gaïametric' progression of transformation. I only trust that democratic society comes to that practical insight and action plan, before it really would be catastrophically too late for our species (IPCC reports and SDGs).
