THEN, NOW AND INBETWEEN

 

I'm not sure when I added that caption to the black and white photo, but it captures the mood of a period in my mid to late 40s, when my journey through life seemed to be converging on a golden age of sorts.

Little did I know that Zimbabwe was about to descend into a nightmare of hyperinflation and political turmoil that eventually forced me to travel to Dubai as an economic refugee.

These courtyard offices at Westgate shopping centre were dashed off in that time of optimism and confidence, the calm before the storm. I felt needed in Zimbabwe in a way that I never quite had in UK.

The style here is a pragmatic simplification of the "Florida colonial" dreamed up by the American concept architects for the shopping centre itself. It's not ground-breaking architecture, but where would we be if every development attempted to be totally original.

There is a place for quiet competence in my view. Perhaps a rather large place.

 

A day's work well done.

Assembling door families for a new project. These are based around a modular system I have been refining and extending for several years now. The kind of projects we do almost always require some new twist on the detailing of these elements.

My experience is that if you develop a system that can handle a wide variety of configurations in a consistent way, new requirements will be accommodated without too much stress.

Sometimes I get a bit stuck, start to feel that it's getting too messy. Usually the answer is to sleep on it. The way forward will be clearer next morning, with a clear head. So break off, watch the sunset. Sip something suitable.

Sufficient onto the day, pick up the struggle in the morning.

 

Many of you will have seen the Notre Dame slide deck that Alfredo Medina prepared, and the commentary, partly in Spanish. It was amazing for me to be transported back to that period of productive teamwork.

Here I present some snippets from the sheet set. I had forgotten how impressive this was, even in its half-completed state. I made a big effort towards the end to weave some story telling in with the model views. Two products of the same process: a Revit model and a deep familiarity with the building and it's history.

One is a tangible object, a thing, even if digital. The other is internal to me, baked into a human being who went through an extended digital process and came out changed in subtle ways.

There is tagging and scheduling of window types also. Another attempt to make the "exploring history with BIM" label more credible. My conviction remains that the core idea behind BIM is as valid for private study and creative exploration as it is for commercial AEC projects.

But it's a hard sell. The BIM pencil is an expensive toy. (unless you can get licenses through your day job of course, in which case it can be regarded as a CPD activity)

 

Here is a location that has seen men and technologies come and go over the course of centuries. We struggle to imagine the first churches on the site. Heavy stone buildings in the romanesque tradition no doubt.

With the beginnings of the modern footprint comes the pointed arch and a gradual shift towards larger windows and greater structural daring. Later on, a period of neglect and then abuse as we approach the modern era. Statues are butchered. The spire collapses.

All this is bemoaned by Victor Hugo in his wonderful allegorical tale, known in English as the hunchback, and later immortalised in film by Charles Laughton. Public sentiment rallies and Viollet Le Duc gets his chance to imprint his own version of authentic Gothic.

We have him to thank for the wonderful grotesques, and for the projecting gargoyles at the base of the flying buttresses: the most spectacular rainwater spouts I know of. Indeed, the access and rainwater systems were marvellous to unravel as we built our Revit model of Notre Dame de Paris in 2019.

What an adventure that was.

 

Another snippet from the Revit Model of Notre Dame de Paris that we built in 2019. If you envisage Notre Dame as a two headed sphynx, this is the front part. More like a two headed llama posing as sphynx, and like many llamas it has bells on its necks.

Bells helped to make churches the beating heart of their community. They can broadcast time, warnings, celebrations, weekly ritual, death. The text here is quite straightforward description. I would like to have more to say about the symbolic meaning of Bells, but I haven't worked that part out.

Bells broadcast outwards, ringing metal, pealing away. Between and below the organ, columns of air, forced through pipes to fill the interior space with a different kind of music, compatible with air forced up by a great throng of human lungs. Ancient melodies of devotion. Inner voice and outer voice, I should be able to make something of that. Let it stew for a while.

Plenty going on here. Secret passage behind the gallery of kings. Spiral stairs that switch position half way up. Wooden framework that stands clear of the walls so as not to transfer vibration from the massive bells to stonework.

 

Floor plans of the bell towers at Notre Dame de Paris. In reality almost everything is slightly out of square. That's a nightmare for Revit, and for any rational analysis that attempts to capture the bigger picture behind all that random variation.

The compromise we chose was to keep most everything orthogonal, and take up the slack in certain key areas. In this case it's the North West tower, whose ribs are picked out in red.

The access passage behind the row of statues known as the gallery of king, shows up clearly here. Imagine Quasimodo loping along and peering over the shoulder of a king or a bishop from time to time.

Spot the wall-join glitch? Revit users will be able to imagine how tricky it was breaking this down into walls of various thicknesses and heights that join together nicely.