TAYLOR MADE

 

Hello 2021.  Catching up on work I did in mid-December.  Starting with a quote from my “LIVE” LinkedIn posts at the time.

"Assembling reference material in preparation for a model of Taylor's wall. Only need to tackle one half, given the symmetry of the two wings. Looking forward to a productive weekend on the ..." 

Bank of England / BIM360 / way-we-build # # #

 

Taylor built two new wings, one to the East and later on its symmetrical twin, creating a grand Palace front facing Threadneedle Street and spanning the entire city block from Princes St to Bartholomew Way.  Quite a stroke of luck, (by the way) that Sampson’s Bank was so well placed at the centre of a city block. 

The original Bartholomew Way was not at right angles to Threadneedle Street, but Taylor squared the corner up.  As a result widens considerably from South to North even today.  The SE extension came first, with four Transfer Offices to deal with the rapidly expanding market in War-loan shares issued by the Bank.

I need a column.  Start with the closest standard item from my modular library. This is a double-nested planting category RFA to allow scaling.  Open it in family editor, select the nested “INNER” and open that.  Three parts here (Base Shaft Capital)  Don’t mess with the capital unless you have to, rather complex.  The base needs to be plainer and the proportions generally taller and thinner.  So delete the void cuts on the plinth reduce the profiles of the sweeps, stretch the plinth up.  Open the shaft and stretch that up.  Now it will overlap the capital so that needs to be moved up to compensate.  So in 15 or 20 minutes I have the column I need (round fluted Corinthian with a plinth) 

The ability to have half or ¾ columns is built in to my system.  Half columns can wrap the corner with an instance tick-box but that’s not needed in this case.

 

So what about the spacing.  Is it completely regular?  I don’t think so.  Seems to me he had to tighten things up a little around the corner.  I do some studies with dimensioned drafting lines to come up with a spacing that works for me.  This is complicated by the position of the central door.  In reality the East wing was out of square in all kinds of minor ways.  This is not reflected in my model (A) because we don’t have reliable information, and (B) because it would be an absolute pain to force Revit to place walls at fractions of a degree, and (C) because dimensioning would also be a nightmare.

But the knock on effect is that the centre of the doorway on Bartholomew Way is probably a couple of feet further to the North than it should be.  These small discrepancies build up.  So I varied the spacing either side of the door and you don’t really pick it up.  Our eye-brain system is so used to assuming symmetry from minimal cues that our subconscious does the necessary.

 

Another direct quote from my LinkedIn live posts

"First mock up of Taylor's screen walls, framing Sampson's Bank of England like two bookends. It's not going to be fully symmetrical in practice. More on that over the weekend, (which starts tonight :)"

I do like the upper part of this image with most of the context unloaded.  You get a really good feel for how close the bank is to Grocer’s hall, and to the way that Taylor extended Sampson’s composition from a substantial town house, to a grand palace.  Shades of Palladio here, although his side wings were farmhouse barns.  Could there be an interesting metaphor here?  Bank of England as gentleman farmer.  Interestingly enough, several of the Bank’s directors did buy up properties in East Anglia and build themselves country homes to signal their arrival amid the landed classes.  Like the Veneto, this is relatively flat countryside with a network of drainage ditches and canals.

 

The corners are reinforced by doubling up the columns (free-standing columns in front of the normal engaged columns) Above this projection, a triangular pediment.  I roughed this out “in-place” to get the proportions right, then copy-pasted the geometry (while in Edit mode) to an external family template.  This gives me a stable object to place multiple times, plus an easier environment in which to tweak the mouldings and add further detail. 

The large arched recesses alternate with smaller niches which use a revolve for the void cut instead of the extrusion.  Later I will add keystones and other small embellishments to complete the effect.

 

Taylor's wall was removed by Soane, late on in his career, finally imposing his style on the entire perimeter of the Bank. In its turn, Soane's wall was completely rebuilt by Baker but with many similarities.  One of my first puzzles when I started on Project Soane more than 5 years ago was to try to understand the differences between the current screen wall, which I had photographed in some detail, and Soane’s phased work, for which there were a number of drawings, some of them conflicting, and no clear indication of what was actually built.  To complicate the issue, the photographs that exist date from at least 50 years after Soane’s death by which time the parapet had been butchered, railings added, plus who knows what Many layers of dirt and grime to be sure.

I digress.  I have a file called “row planting” that dates back to 2013 or so.  Combining the Planting category hack for scaling with linear arrays to do things like egg & dart or modillions, but also balustrades.  Do I dipped into this to create a wall-hosted family with variable length panels.  Another quick fix with unlimited future potential.  Modular once more, in that you can swap out different balusters at will, scale up the height as needed, vary the spacing.  By accident I had the link for Soane’s entrance block loaded on top of Sampson’s version.  Makes for an interesting comparison.  This building has changed so many times over the years.  Fascinating story.  I’ve been learning something new almost every weekend for more than 5 years now.

Linked In again

“Progress on Taylor's screen wall. Wall-hosted balustrade with parameter driven lengths/number of balusters. Smaller niches to alternate with the large arched recesses. By happy accident, Soane's remodeling of the entrance block superimposed (in blue) over Sampson's original.”

 

 

 

OK, so I had two L-shaped screen walls to contain Taylor’s two wings along Threadneedle Street, which was fine for a first order of approximation.  But in reality the return leg on the West side needed to be slightly longer than the East side along Bartholomew Way. 

 

 

Also, while the first extension called for a separate Entrance to the Transfer Halls (to help separate the speculative trading activities from the sober atmosphere of the Pay Hall and the Bank of England proper) The Garden Court needed to be a more secluded zone, similar to the private garden that the Director’s Parlours had overlooked when they rented the Grocer’s Hall.

I separated out the return legs, and ultimately had three links.  Two instances of the front portion (A).  One on the East, then a mirrored copy on the West.  The East wall with its central doorway becomes a separate linked file (B).  A modified copy of this becomes the West side, down Princes Street (C).  It seems that Taylor gave this wall a simpler treatment, Princes Street being more of a backwater perhaps, but mainly because this is not an entrance façade.

 

So I now have the exterior of the Bank quite well developed, as it was when Soane arrived on the scene.  We already had this area as it was when he retired as part of the work I did for the Project Soane competition (and beyond).  The next big “missing piece” will be the Transfer Halls, as built by Taylor.  These can then swap out with the Soane versions of those spaces as we continue to build up our timeline. 

The next post will be about the timeline itself. i.e further development of the schematic model I have been using to understand the way the building evolved, which is quite complex.  But for now let’s just enjoy the main frontage as created by the first two architects (Sampson & Taylor) over a 50 year period