KING BEE IFTAR ... +

 

GAJ iftar at One Za'abeel, The Link. Great crowd of people, classic Dubai "wow factor" design. World class food, of course. It's nice to do this kind of stuff, once in a while. hashtag#how-the-other-half-live.

The views are beyond spectacular. The interior design is what you would expect. Maybe I've seen too much of that kind of stuff, but it doesn't do anything special for me. Creative and competent, but not as impressive as the architecture. Just a personal view.

To be honest I think "groundbreaking modern" is a bit of a dead end, but like I said it's fun for a special night out. I've enjoyed my time in Dubai. It has its contradictions, but I honestly think it's made a huge contribution to the Middle East and to the world beyond. I'm glad to be living in an unspectacular suburb with low to middle-income residents from all over the world, looking to support their families back home.

Still it's good to experience the extremes. I'm reluctant to leave this place completely. Let's see what the next couple of years has in store for me.

 

I'm trying to share more of my musical history to the cloud. My life has not been earth shattering. No fame and fortune. But looking back now, it's been much more of an adventure than you might have predicted say 50 years ago.

And there's a balance of creative endeavours, from my early obsession with painting and drawing, through successive bands in Sheffield, Harare and Dubai... to the BIM pencil / WayWeBuild work of the past 20 years or so.

It's been a great pleasure to rediscover these old cassette recordings, to convert them to mp3, and to explore ways to add visuals. This one uses an online tool called FlexClip and the open source video editor Lightworks. Pretty basic but everything worthwhile begins with baby steps.

 

More slides from RTC 2023 in Auckland. Casa del Fascio by Giuseppe Terragni modeled by me in Revit to illustrate my idea of "The Way We Build" - studying history with BIM. History/Culture /Technology it's all of a piece in my mind's eye. The journey of humanity in the long age of settlement, shelter, specialist skills. .

It's a fascinating building from a turbulent time in the history of Italy. It reworks the Palazzo form of the renaissance but in a totally modern way. Lots of subtle geometric games here. For starters all four Elevations are totally different... while still fitting together quite seamlessly.

 

Each window opening is in fact a complex, multi-layered affair. A combination of slender masonry slabs and posts, operable steel windows and external blinds. Security, shading, ventilation, light. We tend to have a narrow conception of what a window should be, based on standard practice in the place we live for the last couple of decades. But the possibility space is huge and Terragni has come up with fascinating examples here.

They are quite difficult to make as Revit families. Do you cut out a rectangular opening and then put back bits of wall as extrusions within the family. You will end up with lines where you don't really want them. I opted to delete the cut opening and use voids. Also tricky, and the wrapping of finishes will never be quite perfect.

I don't really do these conference talks any more. It's a huge amount of work. My age and my health issues force me to focus my attention very carefully. But for ten or fifteen years they motivated me to really push the envelope on my vision of "the BIM pencil" and "the Way We Build"