To truly appreciate the significance of Alan G. Davenport's contribution to the modern landscape, all one has to do is walk on a blustery day in a high-rise city and experience the effects of swirling winds.
The reassurance that the buildings can withstand the force of those winds can be attributed to the expertise of the engineers who helped design them. The man who pioneered a method for testing the durability of the designs was Alan G. Davenport.
In the early 1960s he designed the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel at the University of Western Ontario and became an expert in wind engineering, studying some of the largest buildings and bridges on the planet, such as the World Trade Center in New York, the Sears Tower in Chicago (now the Willis Tower), the CN Tower in Toronto and one of the world's longest suspension bridges, Tsing Ma in Hong Kong.
Alan Garnett Davenport was born in the city of Madras, India now known as Chennai. His parents Tom and Clara were British tea planters. As a young boy, he was fascinated by the devastating effects of typhoon activity on the buildings in Madras.
In typical colonial fashion, children were sent abroad for their education and Prof. Davenport followed his older brother Rodney to several boarding schools in South Africa, eventually attending Michaelhouse, an Anglican school. He discovered an aptitude for math and science and was an excellent athlete.
He also developed a passion for all things having to do with wind, and during his years at boarding school, he built model airplanes from scratch. Young Alan Davenport wanted to be a pilot.
When he was 18, he left South Africa and enrolled at Cambridge University where he completed first a BA in Mechanical Sciences and two years later an MA in Mechanical Sciences in 1958.
He joined the RAF and flew on weekend jaunts to various parts of England. By 1957, he'd all but abandoned his dream of being an airline pilot; instead he realized his true interest was in engineering, and completed an MSc in Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto.
He also found the other passion of his life, Sheila Smith, who was a fellow student at the U of T and they were married in the same year.
Professor Davenport returned to England in 1961 and completed his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Bristol. The title of his doctoral thesis was "The treatment of wind loads on tall towers and long span bridges in turbulent wind." It was a new area of structural engineering and he was pleased with the encouragement he received from his colleagues.
Canada beckoned with exciting opportunities in engineering, and he accepted a position with the University of Western Ontario as an associate professor, spending the next four decades there.
In the early 1960s, he had an opportunity to test his theories on wind loads for tall buildings when he partnered with Leslie E. Robertson, another major figure in wind engineering, as they were called in at the design phase to consult on the World Trade Center towers.
In a later interview, Prof. Davenport described the problem with the towers. "The particular feature that was important was fluctuating dynamic winds. [The towers] were extremely tall, and the wind characteristics for that height were not known with great precision at that time."
Studies on wind engineering were conducted in Colorado in a wind tunnel developed there, but the need for a facility in Canada became essential for further studies. In 1965, the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel was constructed at the University of Western Ontario.
"It was the first of its kind," Prof. Davenport said. "The aeronautical wind tunnels before it were usually very short, so that the wind flow was kept very smooth - not like the real atmosphere, which is turbulent."
The research facility became an international success and pushed Canada to the forefront of structural engineering.
Prof. Davenport oversaw tests for well-known structures all over the world, such as the CN Tower in Toronto, which he viewed as a perfect imitation of natural aerodynamics.
His son Tom Davenport recalls an interview he gave at the time.
"I remember sitting outside a phone booth at the cottage while he was being interviewed by CBC radio about the CN Tower and explaining how its design really mimicked that of a tree ... broadest at the base and tapering off as it goes up."
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory branched into other fields such as environmental loads, earthquake loading, structural dynamics and meteorology.
Prof. Davenport also developed the world's first statistically based seismic zoning map for Canada.
He seemed to thrive on resolving engineering problems, but he could also see the big picture - the betterment of people's lives.
As a consultant, he travelled extensively, lecturing and advising on the application of wind tunnel engineering and establishing design standards in numerous countries.
By the 1990s, wind tunnel testing was a mature industry. But Prof. Davenport had a new focus.
In 1999, the University of Western Ontario and the Insurance Bureau of Canada became partners in the establishment of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, dedicated to reducing the impact of natural disasters with him as its director.
The effects of the Indian Ocean earthquake and the subsequent tsunami in 2004 raised the problem of how structures could withstand these natural effects. As he explained in a 2005 interview, the solution seemed natural and practical.
"One of the things we noticed, looking at the damage, was that the trees recovered rather fast, particularly the palm trees. By studying the palm trees, we could find some use for that knowledge in improving the design of structures."
Although he received numerous accolades and honours, including the Order of Canada in 2002 and a symposium organized in his honour the same year, Prof. Davenport remained modest about his achievements and maintained a gruelling work schedule, even after the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.
In recent years, long periods of travel became impossible, but he continued to be an ambassador for wind engineering.
He was fond of a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt. "Life has got to be lived - that's all there is to it."
Alan Davenport
Alan Garnett Davenport was born in Madras, India, on Sept. 19, 1932. He died of complications due to Parkinson's disease in London, Ont., on July 19, 2009. He was 77. He leaves his wife Sheila and children Tom, Anna, Andrew and Clare, his brother Rodney and numerous grandchildren.
