STEPS TO ASSEMBLY

 

As a teenager I loved these kinds of odd spaces. Can I remember why, almost 60 years later? Not with the same clarity and intensity. But there was a sense of quiet rebellion, of finding beauty in unexpected places, of anti-beauty perhaps.

The Romantic period had a concept of "the sublime"... Natural beauty that is almost frightening. Perhaps I was inspired by that idea, but seeing it in the harsh industrial fabric of South Yorkshire around 1965. Harsh but ageing, stained, dark, mysterious. That's part of it.

Another part was defiance. Subverting conventional pictorial composition. Instead of a central focus, divide attention to left and right. Maybe twist and turn, hint at a focal point out of sight around the corner.

This image is two separate photos side by side, but it triggered an instant flashback to an earlier me, full of hope and creativity. Hungry for life's experiences which stretched out endlessly, intriguingly into the distance.

 

This is me using Revit in Sketchup mode. St Thomas Worting, just on the edge of Basingstoke. One of the churches I visited using my free bus pass, three weeks ago. It's very cute.

Victorian Gothic. Plain tile roofs over, napped flint walls, with a wooden bell tower. True to the local vernacular. You get off the bus and the church is just across the road, set back behind a neat rectangular graveyard. It's a small church with just one aisle, at the back like a lean-to kitchen on a farmhouse.

 

Not sure how many churches I will model like this. Probably enough to cover all the typical elements found in the dataset. It would be neat to categorise these and feed the data into the pins on the map. Then we could do some analysis. Stone towers versus wood, octagon v pyramid, clay tile v slate or lead.

Would that lead to any meaningful insights? For me at least it will be a way to get to grips with a large and complex dataset. I'm calling it a dataset but it's living history. A thousand years and more of human development and conflict in the heart of old England, a big chunk of Wessex, coveted by Saxons, Normans, Elisabeth nobility, the rich and famous of the modern world.

 

Two sheets with assembly views and photos (from my bus trips) I did a prototype sheet before my last visit to UK, these two are extending that work and moving forward.

It's all a bit crude just now, but better to add new churches at this stage than to obsess over modelling, embedded data or sheet layouts. Let's get the first 8 or 10 churches up to this level. Then we can do a review of methods and LOD.

They are both Gothic, but one is Georgian and the other Victorian, a subtle difference perhaps but very interesting, to me at least.

The Georgian church (All Saints, Deane) is embedded in a country estate, an idealised form, of the romantic age, unrelated to local traditions. The Victorian (Worting St Thomas) pays homage to those local traditions while also being "of its time"

More to come.

 

 Just for a change some Revit tips. I realised yesterday I had forgotten how to do this so maybe it can help someone else. Assembly views. I have massing models of various churches made as Revit families. I place one of these these in the Hampshire Map project, select it, then choose "Assembly" on the ribbon.

You can choose several elements of course, but in this case I only want one. Tbe assembly now appears in the browser. Select it and make assembly views. These can then be dragged onto a sheet. Typically I am using two Elevations and a plan, but 3d views are also possible.

The part I had forgotten is how to get the cut-plane down to a level where it looks like a diagrammatic floor plan. Take any elevation view, disable the view template, go to Visibility Graphics/Annotations and turn on Sections. The plan is treated as a horizontal section indicated by a chain line. Select & nudge down to the desired level.

Simple stuff, but very handy for the work I am doing, comparative studies of a large set of old churches. I want to have one simple summary sheet per sheet that catches the basic form. Then it will be easy to flick through these and do some high-level analysis.

 

ORDER & CHAOS

 

Hampshire Churches. I've been working on this for a while now. Last week I was in Basingstoke and visited half a dozen churches by bus. This underlined for me the value of physical visits. Yes there is a lot of information online and my maps are totally indebted to a few splendid websites. But...

There is no substitute for walking up a small country road on a sunny day and taking in the unique context of a village church from ground level. This visceral experience then feeds into the background information I have on file for that church: when it was built, who was the patron, architect, economic context, current status, Google Earth images, historic England data.

I have started to make full-blown Revit models of a couple of these churches. That was before the scale of the project grew to the extents of these two sheets. So more recently I have started making simple massing models as Revit families, which can be used for comparative studies. Add to this spot details, like the recent window tracery example.

So now I'm back in Dubai. Let's see how the project proceeds from here. It's an iterative process, feeling my way forward, driven by curiosity, learning as I go. The data in the schedules is very provisional. Just a framework for further development at this stage.

Using Revit /BIM as a thinking tool. Tying together my visits, my research, my digital studies.

 

The UK branch of my offspring are doing the Zimbabwe experience right now. My son spent the first 18 years of his life there of course, but for his wife and my three grandchildren, it's a completely new experience and what a wonderful time they are having. Still a wonderful place for a very special holiday even though life is hard for most Zimbabweans.

Dubai is also an an amazing holiday destination, but I am living here, and based in an "affordable" suburb. It's taking a while to adapt to the heat etc after six weeks in UK, but I managed an early morning walk today. So to contrast with the Matopos at sunset, I took a pavement picture. No interesting depth of history like the ones I did for Basingstoke, instead perhaps a morality tale. Once things slide in the direction of chaos, it's difficult to maintain any kind of standards in the public domain.

Here you see bollards, bollards placed on the pavement illegally by a restaurant business and treated carelessly by parking cars. A concrete ramp, of sorts cast against the kerb, also unauthorised and breaking up rapidly. Also an abandoned shopping trolley with a scattering of mouldy red onions.

I have enjoyed living here but sometimes this kind of careless ugliness gets to me.

 

 

Why has it taken me a week and a half to get back into gear? (since arriving back in Dubai) It's frustrating, but I guess it comes with my age and health issues. Best to just go with the flow and not stress about it. Then a day like today comes and the contrast makes it all worthwhile.

I started the day with a physio session for my lower back. Mid-morning. Then brunch at the Plaza Cafe. Avocado stacker. Make the hospital visits into a special occasion.

Back home I did some work on the Hampshire Churches study. Time to document the naming and coding of the Heirarchy of land subdivisions. They are church of England structures, but they have always operated in parallel with the civil /political boundaries. It makes me think of the Domesday book.

Almost a thousand years ago a new elite invading the country, going through an exercise a bit like this, recording the subdivisions and attaching data to them. This is just a first draft.

 

This "Subdivisions Sheet" for the Hampshire Churches project is almost complete. The coding system is my own simplified version. It wouldn't really work for the whole country but it seems to be OK for my defined area. I've tried to capture the hierarchy down from Diocese (Bishopric) to Archdeaconry, to Deanary, to Benefice/Parish.

Interesting to know that the word Dean is derived from Ten. So one Bishop has two or 3 Archdeacons, who each have five to ten Deans. A dean would oversee a handful of parishes, each with a variable number of churches.

I'm not worrying about getting this all strictly correct. As far as I can see the lowest levels reorganise themselves from time to time and choose modern-sounding names for their Benefice. I just need a structure of nested folders to keep my data in, so basing it loosely on the official C of E divisions made sense.

There are some 400 churches in my map now. Goodness knows how I shall handle such a number. Random sampling probably. One step at a time. Looking forward to more visits. Probably next year.

 

THREE CHURCHES

Bus to Laverstoke, or rather Freefolk, which is just beyond. Historically dominated by the Portal family who ran a paper mill that supplied the Bank of England. Seems like there is always a connection to my previous work. That mill is now making Gin, but that's another story.

There are two churches, on opposite sides of the road, both a short and pleasant walk from the bus stop. The old church is small and only semi-active but kept in excellent condition by the Churches Conservation Trust. It really is a magical place, straight out of a Thomas Hardy novel.

There are monthly services so it hasn't quite been reduced to a museum piece. It also benefits from being close to the more active church and I'm sure held in great regard by that congregation. The larger church was built by the Portals in late Victorian times. The composition is impressive with a fine tower, centred between East and West ends, but offset to the south so that it dominates the massing as you approach.

 

 

I look forward to many more of these bus&walk trips as I spend more time in UK and flesh out the Revit-map I have developed with first hand experience of the buildings and their contexts. This pair gives a really insightful glimpse into a community starting to experience the transition from rural subsistence to mechanised production and global trade. It's right there in the images of the two churches if you care to look for it.

One church is very simple and unassuming, domestic in scale. The other shows a sudden leap in size and confidence. A carefully composed work of architectural expression. Frozen history, right there.

 

Bus trip. Church no 3. St Mary, Overton. The nave pillars are Norman, the rest a variety of ages and styles. Approaching from the town, the road dips down to the river Test, with buildings of a former paper mill on the right, now converted to residential use.

Following the road as it winds around I passed the cricket ground on the left with the church looming ahead up on a ridge. Really a splendid setting, dramatised by the walk. It was accessible, inside and out so I could take lots of pictures and pause for a moments meditation, sitting alone in the nave. 

 

Located discreetly behind the church is a modern extension : basically a community centre. All around quite a large graveyard sloping away from the building. I hope this means that the church has an active future, stretching away like the fields. In times of stress and tension elsewhere it would be good to feel that there are signs of stability and continuity here in the heart of old England.

 

 

All saints Deane. This is an interesting one. It's Gothic Revival, but early... Georgian in fact. So it's contemporary with Soane's London churches. It's more of a faux Gothick, a hybrid with a mixture of pointed arches and classical mouldings. Of course Soane himself occasionally built in the Gothic style but reluctantly, under pressure and with little conviction.

I'm trying to imagine myself as an architect of that era, with three centuries of commitment to the classical idiom behind me, representing the belief in rationality, modern science. Around me, the beginnings of industrial production, an energy transition (coal fired steam engines) global trade. Picturesque has become a thing. Playing with styles witnessed by those globe trotters and disseminated by an ever expanding printing and publishing enterprise. 

 

What style to use? No surprise if I decided that churches should be Gothic and government buildings classical. It probably seemed liberating. Creative freedom. No hint of the "anything goes" confusion that might be coming down the road as styles proliferated.

P.S. note the HaHa. The church is in Deane Park, a country estate.