CHARLIE FOUR FOUNTAINS

 

This is the view on the way back from the corner shop that I've been using for several years now. I was buying milk and a few other small items. You can see the unpaved "sidewalk" with a flourishing border of weeds in the shadow of the wall. People habitually discard unwanted furniture and other miscellaneous garbage.

You will also note the festoons of electrical wires and conduits decorating the parapet. Is this legally metered supply? The mind boggles, but a measure of disorder is tolerated in this middle to lower income area. It's called International City and people come from all over the globe to build a better life for themselves based on hard work.

I am no exception.

 

Yesterday I got myself a hearing aid. Long overdue, mostly for picking up that lost 10% of conversational content. It's the high end frequencies of course that tend to tail off in old age. I will adjust in a couple of weeks probably, but right now it's like one of those movies where the superhero can hear every blade of grass twitching.

I went into the office later and conversations were definitely much clearer. There's probably a downside but right now I'm just enjoying the ride. I had considered getting them on the NHS but I heard that it could take a year just to get an ear test, so why not use up some of my spare dirhams.

Mixed in with all these necessary preparations for leaving, I'm trying to work on some of my BIM pencil projects that are least well developed. Larkin is in a better place now, so I'm spending a few hours on Borromini. Charlie of the four fountains to butcher a translation. Very tricky geometry and really minimal data, but as our dear Prime Minister might say "it's the process right"

 

Worked on my tax data for the move, also healthcare stuff for handover to NHS then just managed to squeeze in a bit of Borromini.  Very tricky working with so little data but I found a couple of sections online. Needed to make the building taller, then the bays between the columns got much better proportions. Forgive the “lintel” floating above its supports. I’m really winging it here, but in many ways that’s my Revit comfort zone. Seat-of-pants modelling just for the experience and deeper understanding of a façade that I have admired for almost 60 years.

 

 

 

Gross simplification is a necessity if I am to get a start exploring the meaning of complex buildings like San Carlo. The angles of the street grid, true North and Project North are difficult to pin down precisely and unlikely to be multiples of 5 degrees. But I have chosen to force that issue.

 

This reduces the confusion in my head and the danger of fighting against the preference of Revit for round numbers. Some will disagree with this strategy, but it has served me well more times than I care to count.

From there I have been able to work up the massing of the whole building complex. I will be moving back and forth between this "bigger picture" and the placing of classical elements throughout my exploration of Borromini's little gem.  

 

 

 

 

LAST WEEKS IN DUBAI

 

Buffalo NY at the head of Lake Eerie and gateway to the canal that gives shipping access to the Atlantic. This is where the Larkin soap factory and mail order business was located. The admin building was Frank Lloyd Wright's attempt to adapt his prairie house style to a commercial building.

Vertical circulation and services are expressed very clearly as rectangular masses. Air conditioning is a primary source of design expression as he grapples with his version of Modernism, so different from the European interpretation.

My Revit model is "getting there" a productive week for me despite the sudden invasion of our lives by IRGC missiles. I stand firmly with the UAE which has been so kind to me this past 22 years. There are things to quibble about of course, but there is such a positive vision of building the future, not destroying rivals but welcoming workers and tourists from everywhere. Just my opinion, you may disagree, I'm not here to argue.

I wish you all well.

 

Time is accelerating as I prepare to leave Dubai. Scanning the last of my little diary notebooks, the one with a big heart on the cover.

Goes back to May 2005 when I first got my hands on Revit. Initial reaction as a long time Autocad user... Shock at the file size. But full of enthusiasm. Getting to know Reference Planes, trying to internalise the distinction between type and instance.

Somehow these notes bring back the taste of my life more than two decades ago, beginning to build a life as I moved into my second year in Dubai.

 

The pink heart notebook contains sporadic diary style entries across 2006 & 2007. It took me a few years to distance myself from 23 years in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. The first ten were great, then there was a steady decline, gradually picking up pace until the last five descended into nightmare.

I met Mugabe a couple of times, lived next door to his sister for a while. Seems so long ago now. The office band helped to keep me grounded. A motley crew, and my job was to bring coherence and life to the venture. Wonderful memories.

I early 2007 I was flat hunting, intending to rent but ended up buying. That was a momentous decision. Next week I will sell it on. Then tie up loose ends and fly back to the country I left 45 years ago.

The place has changed almost as much as I have.

 

Could be my last visit to American Hospital Dubai. So many doctors, nurses and support staff found a place in my heart over the past 3 years. In my book, it's not about public v private, although I have benefited greatly from the latter while it was on offer. It's about the people really.

Hoping for a positive experience with the NHS as I move back to blighty. They just have to take over my cancer treatment. It's firmly in remission thanks to monthly injections and daily meds. In this pic there is a little round plaster on my cheek. Checking for skin cancer, but probably fine. I don't normally see the paper, but in the waiting room I appreciate the positivity of the Gulf News.

The Western Press may be freer to criticise, but I can't help feeling that it's slipped over into morbid negativity in recent years. A bit of national solidarity wouldn't go amiss. But what do I know? Bags are packed (almost) Flight booked. Car and Flat sold.

22 years slipping through my fingers like the fine sands that Dubai is built on.

 

 

LARKIN ABOUT IN BUFFALO

 

1904 and Frank was 37 years old, had been forced into private practice after some years of moonlighting and was well established as a designer of private houses with his own distinctive style. The Larkin Building was his first big commercial project. It’s and office block designed around an atrium and top lit (high level windows and skylights) predominantly open-plan.

Arguably this was the Amazon of the predigital era, originally selling soap just soap, but branching out into groceries, crockery and even furniture. Located in Buffalo New York next to a large factory complex, it was demolished in 1950 (woe is me) I was first made aware of this building by the redoubtable Peter Reyner Banham who was my History of Architecture professor in the first year of my architecture studies in London.

I began to model it in Revit perhaps 15 ago, sadly I found no clear record of just when. There are images from 2011 that were obviously collected as part of my research. It has remained at a very early stage of development since then with perhaps a couple of minor revisits, but this week I exhumed the corpse and made a serious attempt at resuscitation.

 

Further development and the model begins to shape up. This building is a serious challenge in that it no longer exists, and publicly available information is quite sparse. But as ever my strategy is to just press on with what I have and make educated guesses. It’s easy enough in Revit to make adjustment and corrections as I go along. 

 

 

In these snapshots I have added windows and the large skylight at the top level. Big questions about the layout of the lowest floor, of the entrance block at the side, and the upper floor with no external windows and a reduced ceiling height. Could be storage, could be mechanical plant. I think the entrance block probably had some cellular office for supervisory staff and there must have been mechanical plant in the basement, I guess.

One question that occurs to me is where the packing of items for shipping was done (I’m thinking of the soap, which went out in smaller presentation boxes)  Could this have been done in the admin block basement, where the order sheets were close at hand? Perhaps I will never know.

 

Sometimes you have to do this with BIM geometry. I call it “Broad Brushing” or “Catching the Essence”  It’s almost always necessary with decorative detail. You could list half a dozen reasons why that is. For now I’ll just say that on a full sheet of elevations,  anything else while turn into a black blob. If I had the time and patience I could put more work into this family and give it coarse, medium and fine detail levels. Right now I have other priorities, so as long as it looks a bit like FLW doing his Aztec thing that’s fine with me.

 

 

 

The reference image I have is obviously from a computer model. Don't know if this was commissioned by the FLW foundation or some similar organisation. I'm pretty confident it's not a BIM model. Apologies for not being able to credit the source.