AHD-PND (ACRONYM HEAVEN)

 

American Hospital Dubai. Lots of shady outdoor spaces and mature palm trees. The architecture isn't exceptional, but it's crisp and confident. What do you want from a hospital anyway? Easy on the eye, practical, reassuring... Just a touch of class. For the first 65 years of my life I hardly went near a hospital, but for the last two, this place has served me well.

So I'm back in the Dubai of many faces after a long and varied trip. Hopefully the first of many to the US during the English winter. My retirement plans continue to shape up, step-by-step (whether or not I actually stop watching)

 

The best thing about the building where my Dubai home-office is located is the curved facade with overhanging balconies. The detailing is not great, but the form is bold enough to compensate. On the other side of the scales we have poorly planned features such as the banks of AC units on full display every time I walk out for a bottle of milk.

Would I like to live in a stylish apartment in one of Dubai's fashionable districts? Maybe.

But that bird has already flown, and in some ways I prefer to stay grounded, living among the ordinary people who have come here from all around the world to work long hours in demanding jobs to give their families a better future.

That was also my story.

 

Looking back at 2019, the year of Project Notre Dame. We never received any recognition from the most senior management of Autodesk, but many of those in the next tier down gave us much encouragement.

We were a team of about a dozen, spread across the globe, all volunteers, working for the hell of it, for the learning experience, fot the comradeship. Each of us chose what we wanted to contribute, keeping in touch via Slack and BIM360. Two of us gave presentations at AU towards the end year and at various other forums both live and virtual.

The collaboration came to a natural conclusion after almost a year, with the onset of the pandemic and we all moved on in our different ways. It was one of the most enriching experiences of my BIM career. A totally spontaneous collaboration with no monetary rewards or official support.

 

I stumbled across the Enscape images of the apse this week by accident. I can't imagine the project without that capability, provided by a team who have been very supportive of my voluntary work and who have definitely transformed the way architects visualise their ideas.

You can download the model in three non-editable formats from the link below. Feel free to use it for educational purposes, but please credit the source.

way we build / Notre Dame

 

JOURNEY'S END (MOTOWN POPPIES)

 

More post-hoc research into buildings I snapped in my brief visit to Detroit City Centre.

One Woodward Avenue designed in 1969 by Minoru Yagasaki who was also behind the ill-fated World Trade Centre in New York.
43 Storey Ally Detroit Centre by Philip Johnson et al circa 1990. I have never been a big fan of his post-modern period. The building is OK, I guess, but to me it's a pale shadow of the Art Deco towers I discussed a couple of days ago. 

 

The Renaissance Centre of 1977 by John Portman with its glass tube aesthetic, including the 73 storey central tower. Owned by General Motors with a prime location on the riverside overlooking Canada. It's kind of dated and simplistic but I imagine many Detroit residents are very fond of it.

Hudson's site mixed use development by SHoP architects is the pick of the bunch for me, at least in terms of its contribution to the skyline. It seems that the form of the tower was reconsidered during construction, including a twisty version.

 

Passing through Basingstoke in cold misty autumn weather. Fallen leaves in the park. Romantic view along London Street. Purples, browns, greys and greens. So different from the Florida I was in just days ago.

Here everything is close by, walking distance. Buildings huddle together against the cold. I spent a very pleasant afternoon with my son inside a new sports bar. Three pints of English beer and a plate of fish and chips. Watching a tightly fought rugby match while probing the nuance of our slightly different takes on the US election.

 

Returning home through Jacob's Alley via an archway opposite the rather splendid portico of the Reformed Methodist Church, and a piece of street sculpture vaguely reminiscent of Barbara Hepworth. Bronze on a granite base. 1993 but I style and substance harking back to at least 30 years earlier. I would have loved to hear my dad's assessment of this work. He also did a couple of small sculptures of "the family" (I still have one in carved in wood)

I'm always struck by how many points of contact there are between British and American culture, but yet how very different they remain in some quite fundamental ways. I love them both and it's a great privilege to be able to move between them so seamlessly.

 

 

Poppy Day, Diwali. Bonfire Night. November is a time of Remembrance and ritual in the UK spanning across different times and sub-cultures. It seems apt to have these events just as winter is knocking on the door.

Boy scouts marching and the war memorial lit up at night. Diwali dancing and a visit to the vegetable market. It's been a brief visit, with a fair amount of sleeping off jet lag, but it was good to squeeze in these activities. A reminder of the distinction pace of life here, as compared to either Florida or Dubai.

I have never quite been sure how to fit monuments and statues into the story of architecture. Forms without function. Symbolism untethered from the realities of daily life. Domestic bliss abstracted in bronze. The horrors of war frozen in cold neoclassical stone.

One last cold weekend in England, en-route between Florida and Dubai

 

COMPARE + C0NTRAST

 

Here's a theory. Spanish Colonial is to Florida as Gothic Revival is to London. That makes the former Ponce de Leon Hotel in St Augustine equivalent to St Pancras Station. Both catered to the Nouveau Riche of the industrial revolution heading south on new railway lines. The power of steam opening up unprecedented travel opportunities.

Henry Flagler made his money in Oil and went on to build the Florida East Coast Railway which served a series of Hotels that he either bought or built along that coast. The Ponce de Leon was the first major project of architects Carrere & Hastings who went on to become very successful in the Neo-Classical style.

 

St Pancras was built as the London Terminus for Midland Railway, centred in Derby and connecting major industrial towns (Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Carlisle) Engineer William Barlow and Architect George Gilbert Scott both made remarkable contributions to this iconic Victorian landmark.

So on the face of it, two very different styles of architecture and types of building. But in terms of their significance to the height of the industrial Revolution in two countries that played such pivotal roles in this great energy transition that gave birth to the modern world... They have much in common.

Just letting my mind wander across built history.

 

 

My time in the home of the brave is drawing to a close. This weekend took me to Detroit to meet up with in-laws. Wish I had more time but a memorable trip all the same.

My favourite, I think... The Guardian Building. It represents a very specific point in history. Sandwiched between two World Wars, the aftermath of the industrial revolution. What did modernity mean? Was it a kaleidoscope of dreams, or the tyranny of the machine. Stark simplicity or lavish excess. Wirt C Rowland chose style, invention, colour, texture : a veritable riot of the senses. Native American references, gold, marble, coloured glass.

 

I didn't get to see Lafayette Park by Mr Less-is-More, Mies van der Rohe. That would have have been the perfect contrast to the glorious excesses of Art Deco. I have visited some of his work though, several years ago in Chicago and New York. Crown Hall for example, the archetypal black box: sacred, impenetrable, like the Kaaba in Mecca. And yet the home to a functioning school of architecture, a simple container for the messy business of life.

The tension between minimalism and playfulness is everywhere in our lives, like the tension between Conservative and Liberal. There are trade-offs to be made at every turn. We try to take these decisions based on hard evidence, but we only see the tip of the iceberg and life is short.

Aesthetics is inescapable. It's not everything, of course, and it's only a proxy. It evolved most likely for mate selection, but proved it's worth in many aspects of decision-making, used right across the animal kingdom. So it seems to me.

Hormones, gut feelings, thinking on-the-fly. Beauty is a word for this inner sense of rightness, excitement, fulfillment. To calculate the odds would take a lifetime. Better to spend that life experiencing the tension between simplicity and complexity, in the moment.

 

 

Fisher Building, by Albert Kahn, (not to be confused with Louis Kahn) You could call this Art Deco but it leans heavily towards the Neo-Classical on the inside, and the stripped-down Classical on the outside.

Cadillac Place is diagonally opposite Fisher Building with a very different massing. Designed for General Motors also by Albert Kahn.

Shinola Hotel is a restoration of T. B. Rayl Company 1915 by Wirt Rowland. An earlier work than the Art Deco, Guardian Building. More akin to Sullivan perhaps with its windows grouped into vertical columns and use of terracotta.

Buhl Building, again by Rowland and channeling his Neo-Classical side although Wikipedia calls it Neo-Gothic with Romanesque accents. Difficult to classify perhaps.

I guess all this is evidence that the early skyscrapers of the 20th century were very fluid in style, searching for a suitable way to express this new kind of building. Trying out different options.

I honestly find this period more interesting than most of what has been built more recently. Not sure why.