DIGITAL LUCERNE

 I’m using Lucerne as a case study for a multidimensional exploratory process. It started off as a painting, a therapeutic physical activity that took me back to my late teens.

The scene was selected from a day trip, 4 years ago. There is something magical about exploring an ancient city on a whim, with no clear plan of action, wandering through the streets and drinking in the atmosphere. My eyes are constantly scanning the buildings, asking myself questions, looking for new insights.

The central focus of the painting is a church. I decided to sketch this out in Revit. Switching to the digital realm takea my mind on new journeys. St Leodegar was a medieval monastery, so there were cloisters to rough out and sloping terrain to approximate. BIM sketching implies data and there are so many sources available now. Google earth, Wikipedia, image search terms. Very soon I am immersed in the William Tell myth and the emergence of the Swiss confederacy from Habsburg domination.

How not to get lost?  It’s a bit like the painting process. Trust your instincts, maintain a holistic view of the project. Let the main themes emerge in a natural way. 

 

Lucerne lay on a crucial trade route. The St Gothard pass is the most direct route from Milan to Zurich. Mule trains from Northern Italy dropped down into the Reuss valley at Altdorf, where Tell reputedly shot the apple from his son’s head, where Landburgher Gesler held sway on behalf of the Habsburg dynasty.

From there, Lake Lucerne marks the beginning of a navigable waterway all the way down to the Rhine: Basel, Strassburg, Karlsruhe, Rotterdam. Revit may not be designed for cartography but I’ve had some good results before, extending outwards from a study of a single building of historical interest.  Mapping out terrain in simplified terms.  Extending well beyond the "20 mile limit."

I’m grabbing 1km squares for free with Cadmapper. It’s a rough and ready approach, not being too picky about exact placements. Beyond the town centre, I default to “freehand” modelling the folds in the landscape based on rough heights from Google Earth. Merging pieces of topography together, using thick floor slabs to represent city blocks. 

 

  

The river Reuss exits lake Lucerne and loops around some lumpy hills before doubling back and heading towards Zurich. The railway line runs parallel to the river. As we approached that morning, the river was on the right and on the left, a long body of water, the Rotsee, with the hills and mountains looming straight ahead. 

I'm setting up a series of dependent views, zooming in progressively and exporting to Jpeg to insert in this post, placing images into blank spaces on my "map" ... not exactly the text-book approach to Revit but it's helping me to place my memories of that day trip into a broader context.

 

It seems to me that the old road North from Lucerne ran on the far side of the Rotsee and took a shortcut between the hills, arriving at the Lake in front St Leodegar. Old Maps show that the modern lakefront there is reclaimed land. The same is true of the station plaza which was my point of arrival. 

 

The grand, mostly classical buildings along that lake front presented an interesting challenge for my “BIM sketch” skills.  How rapidly could I catch the essential feeling of those structures? 

Google Earth’s “3d buildings” feature has been very useful in this endeavour, but the activity of creating my own digital models is really crucial.  Learning by doing.  I’m really glad that I started off this sequence of activities with a painting, getting down and dirty with the brushes and the texture of paint. Moving forward using digital tools is yielding fascinating insights into history and geography. Some of my assumptions may well be false, but we learn by proposing ideas and chasing them down. If I find myself in the weeds I will backtrack and learn from the experience. 

 

This post is a composite then of various techniques, ideas, disciplines.  The history of a city, the convenience of a mobile phone for “research on the fly”, the tactile qualities of acrylic paint.  The chuch of St Leodegar, like St Annes, Limehouse uses the composite order for the main piers that define the nave.  But, although both churches could be labelled “Baroque” they are very different.  The baroque here is an insertion into an older church and Hawksmoor’s style is quite far removed from the German type of Baroque.  Also these are pilasters, applied to a wall face defining a linear nave.  Hawksmoor unified nave and aisles in a single volume with four freestanding, circular columns of the composite order.

The capital itself follows similar principles: Ionic scrolls, much larger than the volutes found in Corinthian, but still with the two rows of acanthus leaves.  St Leodegar inserts a shell top centre, replacing the commonly used hibiscus flower.  It’s a difficult form to capture in Revit, and I have kept it very simple. Something to return to later perhaps.

Lots of stories here. The flow of trade from Northern Italy to medieval Europe. Lucerne as a fortified city profiting by protecting that trade route. The arrival of the railway and transition to tourist destination. Lucerne was a pioneer in this field apparently.

Humour me. The Himalayas formed when India crashed into Asia from below. Subduction, tectonic plates and all that good stuff. Kathmandu is a historic city that lies on a trade route through the Himalayas.

Italy was squeezed up into the European under belly as Africa drifted north. The alps resulted. I visited Kathmandu in 2007 and began some of my earliest BIM pencil studies on my return to Dubai. Ten years later, a day trip to Lucerne and now, in reflecting on that, I see connections and try to weave together stories using a blend of digital and manual tools.  

These last images were drawn on my phone while lying in bed. Using screen grabs from Google Earth, shared to Sketchbook pro.  Add layers and sketch outlines with the S-pen, fill with the paint bucket.  

Processes that I could not have imagined as a schoolboy immersed in the activity painting.