RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHEON

 

 Third post of 2022 and continuing with my massing studies of churches and temples.

My collection of Revit powered religious architecture stretches back to Greece and Rome. The origins of the classical style which has been so influential almost everywhere.

My Pantheon model of 2012 is a “linked project” not a “family”, although it is a much-simplified interpretation of the original. So there are subtle gradations of approach here. We can go from the crudest of massing models, all the way to a detailed exploration like Project Notre Dame. 

As an aside ... always impressed how quickly you can generate interesting visuals from an old clunky model just be bringing it into Enscape3d.  (sigh)

https://grevity.blogspot.com/2012/11/pink-pantheon.html

 

What would the simplest version of the Pantheon look like? And why would we do that? What is the value of a thumbnail sketch? And is there a BIM equivalent?

It turns out that the Pantheon can be generated from a Cube that is nested within the inner space, where the corners of the cube, in plan, touch the internal edge of the circular space.  You can then copy this cube to define the footprint of the portico.  The diameter of the circle is going to be the diagonal of the square, and the dome will be the top half of an imaginary sphere which just touches the ground floor level.

Following this logic it was quite easy to create a series of reference planes that constrain the geometry of a parametric family.  This family will scale, based on a single input: the width of that original cube.

 

I bought a book about the Pantheon on Kindle. So many great insights. Gotta love the interplay between “action research” and “literature review” Spend a few hours, messing with Revit. This stimulates an internal narrative. Endless connections and rabbit holes. Chase up some of these on Wikipedia or Duck Duck Go. Read a book. Collect images. Then back into Revit, or maybe some hand sketches, a morning with brush and paint on canvas. 

Learning all the while.  Searching for deeper meaning.

Anyway, there is a diagram in this book that illustrates this generating geometry of cube and sphere.

There is something about the oscillation between activity and reflection. It’s basic. Theory and Practice. Waking and sleep. Cyclical processes of design or scientific enquiry.

That’s what I am trying to do with my Revit massing families.  It’s quite different from the way I use Family Editor in my day job.  The techniques are similar, but the aims … not so much.  Once again I am trying to use my BIM pencil as a thinking tool, a crow-bar to lever open the packing crates of history.

I intend to develop the family further.  Two more rings to add to the drum, and sweeps for the cornices that define it’s three layers.  Columns within the portico and probably an outer shell for the dome (although this may be harder to control parametrically)

What is the value of making this family scalable?  I haven’t set this as a universal aim for my church families.  To be honest I embarked on this because it seemed like an interesting challenge given the simplicity of the Pantheon’s basic massing.  But having started, I realise that it forces me to understand the relationships of the parts at a deeper level. 

By attempting to scale the whole family proportionally, I make every failure of understanding immediately obvious as the various instances placed in my collections either update correctly or break.  I grew up with the mantra “if you want to understand something, try to draw it.”  Now this has expanded into “try to model it parametrically”

I’m not going to apply this to all my families, only those which appear amenable to this idea, where there seems to be added value on offer.