DAVID DRY MAKING A DIFFERENCE
By Steve Wright
David Dry had a modernist training in architecture, but always gravitated toward traditional vernacular design.
The native Londoner lives in southern Spain, but he is nothing like the hundreds of thousands of United Kingdom ex-pats who have invaded Andalucia and turned ragged hillsides into condo complexes, pastoral farms into golf course developments, sleepy inland towns into faux villa nightmares and seaside villages into garish concrete playgrounds.
And long before we all started worrying about peak oil, spiraling energy costs, the price of sprawl and inefficiency of modern structures, Dry was practicing sustainability brick by brick.
His first job was with Sir Hugh Casson, the famed British architect, set stage set designer, water color artist and television commentator.
“I began to see that the spatial quality of the interiors, the relationship of the building to surrounding buildings and the spaces between, and their fit in the landscape are as important as the building itself,” he said.
After Casson, Dry went to work for a firm of engineers who were specializing in atomic power stations.
“In those days we all thought that this was going to be the future of energy and nobody told us anything about the problems of disposing of radioactive waste,” he said.
Next, Dry founded his own firm with offices in London, Cambridge and Manchester. He got involved with the Royal Institute of British Architects, where he initiated and co-authored the “RIBA Job Book,” which became the standard work on project management in the UK.
“By the late 1980’s we had projects in UK, France and North Africa ranging from entertainment buildings and hotels to high-density, low rise, low cost housing,” he said. “I think our greatest contribution, at a time when all high density housing was high rise, was to build at the same density but no higher than three stories. All families had their own garden and smaller units had a big balcony.”
When Dry’s marriage to his architect partner ended, he married actress Dorothy White and plotted for years to build a big yacht “to escape.”
“After 10 years of cruising around and doing some building design in the winters with my old practice in London, we found an olive farm in Andalucía between the Sierra Nevada and the Mediterranean and I re-found my love of architecture,” Dry said. “I joined the architects’ institute in Granada and started a new practice with a young Spanish architect, specializing in private houses and their gardens, a type of work that I always loved the most. Avoiding attachment to any stylistic dogma, I look for an appropriate response to the client’s needs, finding an organic, ecological solution to each situation while paying homage to the wonderful architectural traditions of Andalucia with their Moorish roots.”
Dry and his wife bought the remains of an old hamlet with six farm workers’ cottages and a couple houses. They decided to get into the holiday cottage rental business, but rather than demolishing and building modern, they worked to preserve and rebuild.
The result is Los Piedaos, a collection of unique cottages that have been restored inside with antique doors and artifacts from other buildings. One cottage retains the old world charm of the Alpujarras, but has been retrofitted for wheelchair users.
Beyond its perfect location at the gateway to the unspoiled Alpujarran villages, Los Piedaos stands out as a sustainability utopia with:
• Bath, shower and wash basin drains channeled to water native plantings outside the cottages.
• Chlorine-free swimming pools purified by water passing through a chamber with low voltage current releasing a colloid of the metals with silver serving as an antibiotic and copper as an anti-fungicide.
• Electricity coming from a wind farm in the nearby mountains of Lanjaron and from a new solar installation just over the hill from the cottage cluster.
• Water heated by solar panels, with electric immersion heater back up for cloudy days.
• Air conditioning/heating units that are heat pumps that take temperature changes from the atmosphere to reduce electricity consumption.
• Flat roofs painted white to reflect sun, thus reducing the load on AC.
• Lighting by low energy fittings (Spain is banning inefficient incandescent light bulbs.)
• The cortijo (little farm that Los Piedaos’ cottage are nestled into) is registered organic and produces olives, oranges, lemons and more.
• Irrigation provided by acequias – ancient waterways, designed by the Arabs during their occupation of the Iberian Peninsula -- that come down from the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada.
• Additional features detailed at the website http://www.holidays-in-southern-spain.com/index.html
“It’s our aim in new projects to make buildings that combine architectural integrity with eco-friendly practice to help create a sustainable built environment,” Dry said. “We are trying to introduce lime-based building products including mortar, render and plaster -- plus solutions that combine hemp, lime and earth.”
Dry’s second wife died in 1997. His present partner, Shujata, a psychotherapist, also designs and operates Los Piedaos.
“She shares my belief that the built environment can and should nurture the spirit, which it so rarely does.” Dry said. “We also share a belief in the fundamental need for humanity to drop its racial, sexist and religious prejudices and work together to create a new world.”
Wright has written for a living for 25 years, with nearly 5,000 published articles. He lives in historic Little Havana and is very active in Miami’s urban issues. He and his wife of 20 years also are involved in making new and old towns more accessible for people with disabilities.
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