FORMA SALTAIRE

 Fred and Etty Slagg came from farming stock. They lived, on the edge of the peak district, open moorland where sheep had roamed for centuries.

The monasteries were long gone, broken shells of disused buildings, piles of stone that spoke of an earlier way of life that organised the rhythm of life, gathering wool, spinning and weaving, growing flax.

Fred hired himself out on a seasonal basis. Sometimes farm work, sometimes hod carrying on building sites, sometimes loading and unloading barges. Etty kept the home fires burning, sitting next to the coal-fired Yorkshire range and darning socks.

She also had a spinning wheel and could take in piece work from local jobbers who acted as middle-men for the wool merchants. But there was plenty to do in their little two up/two down.

 

 

Just woke up to the fact that Forma /Spacemaker is now part of the AEC collection. Training session cancelled at short notice so let's do a bit of exploring.

Choose a location. I've been taking another look at terraced housing, so what about Saltaire? Model housing estate from 1850. I started a Revit model after a visit in 2007. Got a bit stuck on trying to set up a context model, but... "Not never no more "

Took about 20 minutes with Forma. Texture mapped toposolid, 3d building blocks. Street names. Probably not super accurate but it's great for the kind of studies I want to do.

I had the slope wrong, and the setting out grid needed a tweak. Great feedback. Starting to understand the logic of the street layout. Where to next with this new box of toys?

 

I've been struggling with a cold/virus for almost two weeks now. One week to recover 90% then another to get over general fatigue/lethargy.

It's partly to do with being over 70, partly that I've always been susceptible, partly to do with hormone therapy that I've been on for six months now.

But this morning I got up early, went for a short walk and settled down to make this Revit family for my terraced housing studies. Feels good. Life is precious.

Not super parametric, just materials and a height control. Didn't want to get bogged down. First priority is to convert the 4 typologies that I sketched on my phone a while back into Revit projects. Stay focused.

 

 

Fred and Etty lived in Leeds for a while in a rented back-to-back. Etty found cleaning work with the rising class of mill owners, supervisors and merchants who were building rambling mansions in a Gothic revival style.

There was a small communal wash house in the yard at the back where she could catch up with local gossip while waiting her turn.

Fred could still pick up work on building sites as the city grew rapidly, pulling in labour from villages and small towns. There was also loading and unloading work to be had at the canal basin, plus he grew vegetables on a small plot of waste land and helped Etty with jobs like fetching up coal from the cellar to fill the scuttle.

Of course he reckoned himself the best at banking up the fire and damping it down for the night. Etty knew better than to argue such petty issues.

 

It may look simple, but this roof took some figuring out. The two short returns on the main pyramid don't line up, so you inevitably get a difference in eaves height. Adjusting the eaves level and pitch of the secondary roof takes a little patience, but I'm OK with the result.

This is how it was originally built. More recently the return was cut back and two units merged into one. My friends live in this house in Saltaire, so I was able to study the tell-tale scars and fudges from the inside.

I also have a floor plan from the public library in Bradford. Always sobering to see how little information builders needed to get the job done 150 years ago. Are we making progress? or just proliferating red tape and blame shifting?

 

Sitting out on my balcony for the first time in some weeks. It's been too hot, then I got a bit of a flu virus. I'm using my phone to work/think. Not so much for the day job, but for the BIM pencil/way-we-build persona I assume on LinkedIn, the "phone" is a huge part of my process.

Of course it's totally reliant on 50+ years experience being in love with buildings. almost 40 using computers. 25 with a laptop, approaching 20 as a Revit/BIM addict. But the immediacy of this handheld brain extension, tethered to my back-catalogue in the sky... The fact that I can walk away from my desk for a cup of coffee and some sideways thinking... that's given me a daily routine: greater directness and spontaneity.

I use two core apps on my Samsung Note to collect images and text in a chronological stream. Not all for LinkedIn, but that's a significant part of it. This image, compiled with Pixlr, while sitting out here in my shorts and sweating profusely, seeks to capture the ecosystem.