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.