SOPHIE (SPIDER GIANTS-WHAT IS BIM FOR)

Random images from a taxi window. This is Dubai, a concrete forest in the desert. Complexity and contradiction. It reflects the human condition in a globalised world : part magical, part sordid, alternately inspiring and depressing.

Shakespeare would have loved it.

I like the juxtaposition of unrelated verticals in these images. Iconic architecture and banal infrastructure scrambled up together. A lamp post competes with Burj Khalifa, which hides behind the trees then pokes through the roof of an odd little tower.

 

 

Power lines and pylons are a recent obsession. They have the beauty of spiders webs, things we wish to sweep from sight when they invade our carefully curated homes. We can be so judgmental and dogmatic at times.

Perhaps it was necessary for survival a quarter million years ago. 🤔

 

 

There's a strange phenomenon that crept up on me as I got older. I started playing recorded music less, stopped playing the radio in the car, found that I valued silence.

Eventually this extended to playing my guitar, which I don't do as often as I think I should. But sometimes the mood just comes upon me and off I go.

This tribute to my granddaughter is an extreme case. I came in from sitting on the balcony, picked up the guitar and just started playing, almost immediately I had the first line, out of nowhere.

In the time it took to put on a vest and mount my phone in its stand I had the three rhymes. Press play, single take, upload to YouTube.

That's the way I am about most things. I do have a certain routine in my life, but I can't perform a song the same way twice, I can't say for sure what direction a painting or drawing will take. Never really know when one of my BIMpencil projects will start or finish.

Here's to you Sophia. I wonder what kind of unique personality you will bring forth to enrich our family's future?

 

Pausing at the beginning of my morning walk to catch my "balcony view" from a different angle. (red arrow) Seven storey blocks arrayed in a semi-circle with narrow view slots between them.

For the past couple of weeks there have been workmen setting about the roundabout at the mid point of this array. Eagerly awaited upgrade to the landscape.

I pause to take a shot of the work in progress and realise that the Burj Khalifa is hiding in the haze, lost in the forest of lamp posts until I zoom in. During the pandemic I used to walk down that road, so I knew it was there but the memory had faded into a different haze inside my head.

In a way it would have been nice to see a tiny Burj, framed in the view from my balcony, but perhaps it is more appropriate to have the giant skeleton with multiple arms spread wide to carry pure energy across the desert.

Dubai, like any other major city in history is sustained by energy and symbolism... That's what this little collage brings to mind.

 

In 2019, about 5 or 6 months before the pandemic descended on us, I participated in a conference in Dubai on the theme of open BIM and industry 4.0

Full disclosure, I have a healthy distrust of both of these slogans. But today I just want to share a couple of slides from my talk,which adopted a broader definition of open BIM, which too often boils down to "you must use IFC"

Look beyond the narrow confines of your day job. Drawings and text (geometry and data) have long been used for activities that inform and energise the building industry beyond the focused activity of producing documentation for a particular project.

Why has BIM not penetrated into these areas?

These two slides highlight the world of reference books and design manifestos. In the past these works used essentially the same toolkit that an architect, engineer, or planner applied to fee earning work.

Why have these broader, reflective activities become siloed off? Where is the BIM version of Bannister Fletcher?

 

If we think of BIM as an integrated digital approach to construction (AEC) why not broaden our outlook to include the many activities that have historically existed around the edges, beyond the narrow confines of individual projects.

These slides from 2019 highlight the way that previous technology breakthroughs such as the printing press and copper plate etching, led to memorable treatise by architects and designers that we still revere today.

Historical analysis, reference manuals, Urban design theory, Visions of fantasy. These are all elements in the continuing education of anyone with an interest in the built environment... meaning practically everyone.

When I talk of the BIM pencil, I am thinking about the need to integrate this kind of work into our view of what BIM should be. Where is the BIM equivalent of Neufert, or Nolli's map of Rome, or Serlio's four books?