CLASSICAL COMPOSITION

I was looking at the Composite Order and came across a capital from Romania which has an interesting version of the Acanthus leaf. 

 

 

I decided to have a go at modeling this in Revit.  I want to keep things as simple and lightweight as possible.  In a BIM context, we are not going to capture every delicate ripple of a vegetation inspired ornament.  My aim is to capture the essence with a “few bold strokes”.  The magic of the human brain will do the rest.

The first piece of geometry is a flat central rib, with a hooked top.  This is a simple sweep on a curved path, cut by a void extrusion running at right angles to the path. 

 

In the first iteration the hook had a flat top, but by adjusting the shape of the void I was able to soften this.

The side leaves are created in a very similar manner, but the sweep profile is just a gentle curve, without the hook at the top. 

 

So that gives me the first row of leaves, to swap out in my standard Corinthian capital.  You can see the previous leaf shape in the second row.  Easy enough to make a taller version of my new leaf geometry  for the second row.  That was looking pretty good, so I felt inspired to work on the cauliculi, a bouquet of leaves in a cone-shaped container that softens the transition between the acanthus rows and the volutes.  These are just extrusions, but the trick is in setting the angle of the reference planes that host them.

 

What I have now is far simpler than the carved stone/wood or moulded plaster of an actual Corinthian capital.  Revit geometry is ill-suited to the task of capturing the subtle curves of foliage.  But it’s a significant improvement on my previous version, which itself was a step forward from the one before that. 

Importantly it’s a traditional family with none of the shortcomings of conceptual massing.  Crucially it’s relatively lightweight, around 1.3mb. 

Looks pretty good when rendered up in Enscape3d and given a bit of my favourite "rapid image processing."

 

 

Hope you guys will find this explanation of my work useful.  The modular column system uses capitals with a standard neck diameter which sit inside double-nested planting families for scaling to any size required in a project.  I have a wide range of capitals, shafts and bases which can be mixed and matched to create a huge set of options … and I add to these whenever I have the time and inclination, as was the case with these two capitals.

You can download these 2 capitals & a sample column from the link below. (Revit 2021 versions) The system works well for me, don’t know if it will suit your needs.  If any of you want to collaborate on a BIM study of the kind I have been sharing on this blog … maybe we can talk.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sf6nnR1eDtQlLmbhdSYfqGMNkBzl_z0H/view?usp=sharing