UPS AND DOWNS

 

Four churches in Mutare. Pics from 2003. Don't know why I didn't think of including these in my Revit churches series before, would make an interesting little group.

I hope I get to see Mutare again one day. Full of nostalgia for my previous trips, spread across a 23 year residence in Zimbabwe. Becoming a citizen, raising a family, watching things go wrong. Hyperinflation can only really be understood through first hand experience.

I clung onto that citizenship and the dream of retiring to sit under my mango tree. Sometimes you just have to let go of your dreams and accept the reality of what life has thrown your way.

I'm pretty sure that people are still worshiping in those churches, which is more than can be said for many in Europe. Vivid memories of driving past open air services under trees in Zimbabwe. Congregations dressed in white.

 

Three eaves and one verge. Two examples of extended timber rafters, and two variations on brick corbels.

The timber rafter extensions seem to have over - fussy profiles... until you realise it's just the same thing repeated two or three times. They are made up from smaller sections, bound together with metal straps. Each one has the same shaped end with slots for the straps to sit in.

The sections slide past each other like the telescopic legs of a tripod. I should do Revit versions of these, just to check out my assumptions.

Four years on and I'm still finding fresh insights and inspiration in the roofs of Volterra.

 

 

September 2018, and we were deep into Notre Dame. Starting to tell a story in pictures and words based on our voyage of discovery. That was a great little team. We all had slightly different motivations, but it didn't seem to matter.

Just take on a task and enjoy the conversation along the way. Lots of little geometry puzzles, and a tricky decision over how much "straightening up" to do.

For me, BIM is not restricted to the commercial realm, it's not all ROI and meeting deadlines. I draw to understand the world, to explore the nature of human culture as it has evolved over the centuries.

BIM as an artistic endeavour, comparable to music or painting. Not a dry and dusty business of protocols and compliance, but a joyful adventure. Fresh as the day I first held a pencil, or fired up a computer.

February 2019 was an unusual month for me. The only time I have spent a night in hospital. First ever "surgical procedure"... The indignity of wearing a catheter for several weeks.
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Extra time with my grandsons was a bonus. I cherish every moment with those two. Jack decided to make paper place mats with images of food on a plate.

We visited a village called Upton Grey which lies on an old Roman road and decided to host a thunder storm.

This thin slab of glass that moves around with me has a timeline of my life "inside°, a living breathing scroll that extends my feeble, fallible memory. Forty years ago I carried a pocket notebook. Similar but different.

The arrow of time.

Snapshot from my cloud drive. These are screenshots taken while I was trying to understand the cap and pan roof system that I had seen in Volterra.

I was using my BIM pencil of course, "sketching in Revit" just to understand the geometry and how the tiles fit together, how they accommodate irregularities.

I'm sure I would have learned more by laying out real tiles on a real roof. Even more by spending a day in a tile factory. But piecing things together by trial and error with digital tools that I have been using daily for 15 years now is a pretty good way to learn.

 

 

 

Second pass on the fourth panel this morning. I guess I am going in reverse order, this time around. Actually I just chose the one I was least happy with for further development.

Paint brush on canvas is a great way to start my weekend.