Bell Architects - Creative sustainable

Bell Architects are energetic designers exercising their design creativity with an eye on energy and the environment, natural materials and beauty. Murray Bell of Bell Architects graduated under Professor Robin Webster at SSSA Aberdeen, and during that time had the privilege to explore the challenge of ecological design with sustained input from Howard Liddell, then of Gaia Architects. One of Howards Liddels key issues was to avoid complexity, if at all possible. It is certainly feasible to design a highly rated ‘techy’ eco-house, and fill it with too many gadgets that are expensive in terms of earth-materials, and generally difficult to maintain / repair. As a continent, Africa is currently being pillaged for resources – all to feed our hungry demand for technology and progress in the West. If we design houses that are tech-complex, this situation will just become more pronounced. The responsibility is on the imaginative architect to design houses that are efficient, warm, lifetime homes and that do not justify or require complicated technology to make them perform. However, not many people care about these issues truly, they are more interested in achieving an excellent SAP rating, often at the expense of the environment - nobody asks how to recycle a solar PV panel these days – and can you?