GOLF IN THE GULF

I set out this weekend to make my first screen capture video.  Please don't laugh, I will get better with practice.  I decided to make a fairly simple parametric mass family such as we might use in early design development, and the building that sprang to mind is one that my good friend (and boss) Brian Johnson designed early in his career, here in Dubai.

The Club House at Emirates Golf Course is designed as a cluster of tents, symbolising the Majlis course which was seen as something of a miracle at the time, being an all grass, championship golf course in the middle of the desert.  Since then a second 18 hole course has been added, and the desert has given way to a dense forest of office & residential towers, not to mention several hotels.
I'm pretty sure this was a hand-drawn project, probably with much fewer drawings than the enormous sheet sets we churn out these days.  How different the world is just 25 years later.  It would be interesting to take this simulation of early design development a little further using the Emirates Club House as a case study.

On a completely different topic, I talked to a contractor last week who was complaining about having to take Architects 2d CAD plans and convert them into BIM models in order to anticipate coordination problems on site.  I've had similar stories from Engineers who have been the lone Revit pioneers in a design team.  Needless to say we are GAJ have been struggling with the need dumb down our Revit models into flat DWG for clients, engineers and contractors.  Let's hope the Arab Spring of Revit is approaching.



So back to the videos.  It comes in 3 parts, and the links are here.

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

You can also download a project with the massing family arrayed in 3 different configurations here.

Tent Mass