OBITUARY: Alan Macdonald
Family and friends gathered in the Rogart Hall last month to say a fond farewell to Alan Macdonald, Ballinreach, who died on September 25, aged 73.
Above all things Alan was a Rogart boy, but he was also much more than that; a fine architect, a photographer, an inventor and gadget man, a pioneer of computerised presentation techniques, an author, a good friend to many, and latterly, a great defender of the East Sutherland landscape which we are all so lucky to enjoy.
Alan was a fun person, good company, full of banter, cheek, mischief and irreverence. Born in 1946, when life was a lot harder in the north, he was reared in the embrace of a large family circle based around the family croft in Little Rogart who encouraged his active curiosity and inventive nature.
At that time Rogart was full of interesting characters which fostered his great talent for mimicry. His mother and father, to whom he was devoted, were his first guardian angels and throughout his early life he was fortunate to encounter people who recognised his talent, encouraged him and steered him in the right direction.
After Golspie School and a spell in the Council drawing office in Dornoch, Alan finally left the north to work as a draughtsman for Lindsey Council based in Lincoln. He always maintained that he only got the job because they mistakenly thought he was coming for interview from Sunderland not Sutherland and it was the best way to cover the embarrassment of his high expenses. His boss there soon spotted his talents and suggested that he had the capacity to study architecture and even drove him to his first interview at The Hull School of Architecture from which he would ultimately qualify in 1972.
He then secured a job as an architect with Shetland Islands Council where he had perceptively recognised the future opportunities that the oil boom would offer. In Shetland his personality soon overcame any ‘soothmoother’ connections and in between a catalogue of legendary practical jokes, still fondly remembered today, he completed many local housing projects coming up with a traditional design which was widely adopted and ‘Alan’s houses’ can still be easily recognised today. He enjoyed the company of so many superb musicians in Shetland that he ultimately put aside his guitar and musical aspirations, but he never lost his love of music. As development slowed in Shetland, Alan cast his eyes further afield and in 1982 he moved to Hong Kong to join one of the largest architectural departments in the world.
The Architectural Services Department employed almost 2,000 people and Alan worked for a division carrying out projects for the Urban and Regional Services Departments which included markets, parks, swimming pools, sports complexes, historic preservation etc. The work was varied and sometimes surprising.
He arrived in Hong Kong at the beginning of a decade of miraculous change and development. There were still many squatter villages on the slopes of urban Hong Kong and Alan was involved with the early transition of these refugee colonies into new public housing complexes. He was the liaison architect for two of Hong Kong’s great parks. The Hong Kong Park in Central and the much larger The Kowloon Park. The latter was located on the flight path to the old Kai Tak airport and was close to the infamous Kowloon Walled City where he was also involved in its eventual demolition and re-settlement of its residents. One of his other lasting legacies in Hong Kong is the beach and surroundings at the prominent and historic site at Repulse Bay. It was a project he initiated when a Dutch dredger was lying idle and in pressing his department to use the opportunity, Alan found himself in charge of a multi-million-pound project. Thirty years on and several typhoons later, the beach is still there along with a boat landing stage, a playground and a fine promenade, as popular as ever, and an unsung legacy of Alan’s ingenuity.
In Hong Kong his presentation skills came into their own. He always loved gadgets and tech equipment and applied this talent to office work. The presentation of design projects often to the lay committees of Urban and Regional Councillors through the medium of film, audio and explanatory graphics was not only welcomed but proved a valuable marketing tool.
This was recognised, and Alan was set up with his own Design Unit and a team of talented designers in a suite of offices fitted out with costly film and editing equipment. Before computerisation and power point, Alan was soon producing high quality audio-visual project marketing presentations for a range of government departments and the Governors of that time.
Alan was quick to use computers and recognise the potential of digital technology in his work. He also had an entrepreneurial vision which led him to leave government in 1992 and open Architech, his own computer graphics company in Hong Kong. He employed a team of talented computer graduates, technicians and software specialists including notably his son Fraser. Alan hoped Architech would specialise in development and technical films, and although some of this work materialised, what his clients really wanted were realistic photomontages of development proposals to show scale and external design in their actual surroundings.
Architech met this challenge, devised an accurate method and within a few years such visualisations became a mandatory part of the Hong Kong planning system. His company thrived in a period of rapid development and fast increasing computer capacity. Work commonly involved the use of helicopter film footage as the basis for computer graphic applications. Eventually he dispensed with photographers because they so rarely got exactly the shot he wanted and became a skilled photographer in his own right. He kept abreast of graphic design technology, never passing through London without a visit to Tottenham Court road and evaluating the best features from all the new software as it became available.
In 2002, he decided it was time to return to the Highlands and he moved his company Architech into a beautiful studio office in Baron Taylor’s Street, Inverness. Alan had been concerned for some years about the visualisation of wind energy projects which were picking up pace in the Highlands and finally in 2008 he came together with The Highland Council over a proposed scheme for Nigg Hill. Gordon Mooney was the Principle Planner involved and he and Alan shared a healthy degree of scepticism about the scientific basis of the visualisation methodology used in applications at that time. Thus, the Council sought his advice to understand photography in this context – not just as an art but as a science; how this relates to cognitive science and how to understand and represent the scale of increasingly large turbine structures in our landscape.
Alan’s knowledge and experience in visualisation and photography were invaluable and he and Gordon Mooney made a formidable team in disproving the claims of accepted practice. Their partnership led in 2009 to the development of the Council’s own visualisation standards which in the Highlands now provide a clear methodology for producing accurate and reliable images. Alan refined and updated these standards many times since and today they remain a unique cornerstone for wind energy development in the Highlands.
In his final years Alan spent considerable time demystifying the subject, exposing poor quality visualisations and providing alternative and truthful images for groups and local authorities across England, Ireland and even as far afield as New Zealand. He travelled widely advocating the use The Highland Council Standards, undertook research which validated his methodology and battled with SNH to re-write their discredited guidance. In 2016 Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) finally re-wrote its guidance, however in Alan’s opinion, they are still not to be recommended.
His most significant legacy in this field is undoubtedly his authoritative book – “Windfarm Visualisation: Perspective or Perception” and his website www.windfarmvisualisation.com which continue to reveal, explain and inform. Alan never really retired continuing to advise on projects to the last. He was a visionary who when necessary, had the tenacity to understand truth and to explode myths. He never compromised his integrity in his work and not many can make that claim, as he often quipped in his cheery way “not bad for a wee boy from Rogart”! DR
