AUCKLAND V TUSCANY

 This is scary. Eleven years ago I was on my way to New Zealand for the first time, perhaps the only time. I was full of hope. Visiting my sister and speaking at a BIM conference. I wanted to share my belief that Revit is a thinking tool, like a pencil. That we can use it for self reflection.

I am older now and conscious that time is running out. But I remain proud of this work, tentative though it is. I attempted a study of three famous office buildings, very different in form, style and context.

I have been told that my conference papers are not commercial enough. But isn't that the point? Isn't there a place for one out of thirty presenters to explore BIM as a tool for asking the bigger questions? Don't we have a duty to future generations as well as to our clients?

 

I am a great believer in visual thinking. People often tell me that there are better tools than Revit for "modeling something like that" But this also misses the point. I want to humanise our modern digital tools, to connect them to the grand tradition of visual thinking from cave art, to Leonardo, to Cezanne or Picasso. (not forgetting Gordon Cullen or Leon Krier)

Eleven years is a long time. I don't go to these conferences any more. I'm trying to just reflect on the winding road my life has followed and to share what I can for future generations. It's not earth shattering, but maybe it will be useful to a few bright souls looking for a different approach.

One last post about Volterra (for now) I chose this church as my Revit modelling exercise to be my original contribution to the workshop. All the sessions and practical experiences were wonderful but I am never going to go round laser scanning on my own. Recognising where best to direct your efforts is an important skill.

Dave Dreffs helped me to convert multiple photos into a usable mesh which I then processed to remove edges and embedded in a side altar family. It's a shield motif. Not amenable to native Revit modelling. Doesn't show up in these images. I did the smoothing and embedding back in Dubai.

Mapping the city and abstracting into diagrams was a multi-dimensional exercise. Topography surface from GIS. Sorting my photos and grouping by district. Inventing those districts for my own purposes. Linking point clouds. Struggling with levels. Searching for appropriate levels of detail with extrusions. Starting in-place and choosing when to covert into loadable families.

All those dimensions fused together into a learning experience for me. The models were later handed on to Paul Aubin and may have helped the team as they incrementally build up their digital representations of a wonderful historic city.

Paul has also done some great Revit modelling of individual buildings. I'm a little out of touch with the latest work but it seems to be maturing and integrating very nicely. Food and drink being consumed in wonderful surroundings for sure.

Memories to treasure.

Casa del Fascio and Lever House. Two fascinating office buildings. One from just before WW2 the other just after. Both modernist visions of a rational, technological future.

Terragni's modelling of the four different facades of his courtyard block crackles with tight creative energy. But there are many more secrets waiting when you start to model a building like this with a tool like Revit. So many hours spent puzzling over things I didn't quite understand. Sadly I will probably never visit this building now. Life is a wonderful gift. Accept the hand that is dealt to you, and do something special with it.

 

Lever House, I have seen. Visiting New York when my daughter lived in New Jersey. I saw images of this building as a teenager when I was first exploring the idea of being an architect. It's a blend of idealism and pragmatism that seems typically American. And it's almost exactly the same age as me.

The curtain wall is a fascinating hodge-podge. How rapidly that technology has developed as specialist firms entered an ever expanding market. I exported a DWFX study file of a portion of the framing and facade system that was part of my presentation and has been shared with a few architecture students since then.

According to British art critic Reyner Banham in 1962, Lever House "gave architectural expression to an age just as the age was being born"... so says Wikipedia. Banham was my history of architecture professor at the Bartlett in 1970.