Saturday, January 11, 2025

SURGICAL BRIDGE

 

Just a quick personal update.

I spent new years eve alone, in hospital, recovering from cancer surgery... Please don't worry, I am doing well and hoping for a full and speedy recovery.

It started with a routine screening (stool sample) and proceeded very rapidly to surgery just a week ago. A portion of intestine was removed and I spent 4 days in hospital overall. Back at home now (International City) and taking things a bit slowly, but my digestive system is fully operational and it looks like I dodged another bullet.

To be honest it's just a privilege to live each day as it comes, with memories and friends all around the world. Above all... a wonderful family.

 



 A follow up to the night shots of Al Seef from just before Xmas.

One element that was added fairly late in the schematic design stage of the BIM model was a series of linking bridges between buildings at the upper level. These areas contain hotel rooms. My son and daughter-in-law stayed there a couple of years ago and it's a really great spot for tourists who want a heritage feel, right in the centre of old Dubai.

In the first place I was given a series of sketches by the concept team. Depending on the design intent I created a family for the complete bridge, or a group of families to be hosted in walls. Also some new material definitions and wall types.

 




All this went into a collection file during the development phase. Concrete floors were to be in the engineer's linked files of course. Not our scope of work. The purpose of the linked BIM models was mostly for spatial coordination, between buildings and between disciplines. There was also some scheduling, but much of the typical detailing was handled in 2d, and or resolved on site.

Much of my time for the past few years has been spent developing kits-of-parts for specific projects to facilitate the work of a modelling and documentation team. Could be I'm coming towards the end of that phase now as I approach 74 and ease into an occasional training and support role with reduced hours spent on the day job.

Great memories though and a shout out to Anes Talmoudi for an unfailingly design eye and a big heart.

 



Further development of the Typology Catalog for pedestrian Bridges on the Marsa Al Seef project in 2015

The masterplan files were pretty heavy with all the linked buildings loaded up. So the key to bridge locations used jpeg exports. It didn't update automatically, but at least it didn't crash and we only needed 2 or 3 iterations to sort out the basic design issues

I set up two perspective views for each bridge type. These could be exported as jpegs to a folder that the design lead could review and mark up. Maybe today we would use shared views for this, but 10 years ago this got the job done.

 




Then for fine tuning we set up a sheet for each bridge location where the interface was the adjacent villas could be interrogated more carefully. There was always a movement joint on one end of the bridge, so the concrete structure belonged to the building at the other end. That's the building where the bridge sheet would be set up.

I love this kind of work because it really brings out the benefits of using a BIM authoring tool like Revit. Happy memories.

 



 

Thursday, January 9, 2025

DXB. THE OLD & THE NEW

 

When I first came to Dubai there was a lot of "novelty for novelty's sake" in the architectural expression, plus a few standout icons. The Burj Khalifa was just getting going, still branded the Burj Dubai and just a concrete core a few stories high. It could be seen from the roof of the villa where I had a room.

These shots were taken early on Xmas morning from the apartment we have rented for this year's family get together. Missing the UK branch, but of course, once your children get married things get a bit more complicated, especially when your family is spread widely across the continents.

 



There is still a tendency towards design hyperbole, but I do think the "Dubai style" has matured into something genuinely interesting from an architectural history perspective. Ranging from brash to super-cool with the occasional Islamic motif blended into the mix.

Is it more of a regional style nowadays? Gulf State Modern?... Perhaps, but I don't think there's any doubt that Dubai led the way. These days I'm totally comfortable with the sprinkling of whimsy. References to Big Ben or the Chrysler Tower. There is enough disciplined, rectangular, abstract design to allow these flights of fancy

 



These images are from 23rd December, wandering around Marsa Al Seef with family visitors. It's at its best at night but has also mellowed and matured as more and more of the tenant businesses add their own personalisations.

Al Seef was a great project to be involved in. My role lay mostly in developing a library of Revit families based on hand drawn sketches and expressing traditional Gulf vernacular in a BIM friendly format. We had a great team, from the project leads down to the document controllers, and I will always savour that period of my time at GAJ.


I have always been suspicious of cries of "fake" and "pastiche" when it comes to architectural criticism. If you have to frame your critique in moralistic terms it suggests that your argument may be a little weak. Rather ask if the scheme fulfills it's mission, in this case as a tourist destination. Then perhaps are the spaces well composed? Do the transitions from overall massing to fine detail work? What about the balance between consistency and variety.

 



You get the idea. In my view it's a resounding YES on all fronts. The whole place was alive and the many small outlets thriving. Good food, good fun, good aromas and associations. Much credit must go to our client who had the vision to recreate this childhood memory of creek-side life.




Friday, December 27, 2024

XMAS FUN

 20 years ago was my first Xmas party at GAJ. A few of us had decided to get a little band together and perform a handful of songs at the party. That was the birth of GAJ rocks which went through several iterations over the years.

The last of these was a three piece called "out of the Blue" which was no longer just an Office band. When that line up fell apart I did a couple of solo gigs but gradually the momentum dissipated.

So yesterday was a special moment for me. To get up at this year's Xmas party and strut my stuff. Well I don't have the full repertoire of moves any more, but it sure felt good and the audience response was great.

So two pictures, 20 years apart, and a host of memories in between. Such a blessing to have had music in my life.

 



I've been advocating the use of what I call a "BIM sketch" for many years, as a way to explore the history of buildings : how they are constructed, how to interpret them within a given historical and social context, what accounts for their aesthetic appeal, and so on.

This is Bradlows furniture store, a land mark modernist work in Central Harare (known as Salisbury in 1937 which is the date on the East elevation. There is a hint of Art Deco, which was quite popular in the country at that time, but predominantly it leans into the International Style of Corb and Mies, expressing the structural frame and grouping windows into horizontal bands.

I don't know how far I will take this and to be honest I don't have enough information to do a thorough job. Realistically I'm not going to be able to visit the building in the foreseeable future, if ever. I have been inside but it was before digital cameras, never mind smart phones, so all I have is vague memories.

Let's see how far this goes, but I'm learning quite a lot already.

 



. . . Two of my children are in Dubai with their spouses and my youngest grandchild. Finally I got to visit the Museum of the Future. The building itself is hugely impressive, especially in its outside form. The exhibits however were a big disappointment.

Probably many visitors have a different impressions, and that's fine. But to me they lack the wow factor that you would expect in Dubai and from all the hype around this project. I don't know what I was expecting. I'm certainly not pretending that I could have done a better job. But I do think that building itself deserved a better job from the team that imagined the storyline behind the permanent exhibition.

 




I have lived here for more than 20 years, and Dubai is a beacon of hope in a troubled region. Far from perfect, of course, but i am rarely impressed by the arguments of it's most vocal critics. This is a city that has been very kind to me and to around 3 million other non-Emeratis who make up the bulk of its population.

 




The Dubai way is to dream big and to live at peace with people of different faiths and nationalities. It's success is partly underpinned by a willingness to come down rapidly and heavily on troublemakers , undocumented migrants, criminals etc. Perhaps it's too harsh, but I for one am grateful for the safety and success of this remarkable city.

A very merry Xmas to all my friends around the world. I love you all.