HAND SKETCH - BIM SKETCH (50 YEARS)

 

I'm discarding old notebooks after digitising selected pages. I have always had a habit of doodling in a lecturer or meeting when my attention wanders. That's the one thing I miss about meetings. I don't seem to doodle quite as much as I used to.

The eye of Horus was inspired by listening to Jordan Peterson on a podcast. Probably done afterwards. I play podcasts in the background when I'm working on my laptop, so there's no scope for doodling really. I was quite taken with the idea that the eye symbol was about paying attention, really paying attention. It reminded me of a clip I saw of David Hockey talking about his working process and his ability to see things in "the everyday" that are really fresh.

 

 

I was also thinking about Iain McGilchrist and his notion of different modes of attention : fine detail and broad brush. Right brain, left brain. Parallel processing. Meanwhile I was modeling a festoon, or swag. Flowers and fruits strong up on temple walls on holy days. Then at some point carved in stone. How to evoke that simply in Revit?

Well you start by doodling it, then you doodle it again. Hand and eye, focus on fine detail. Meanwhile the back of your mind is reprocessing, seeing the big picture, laying the ground work.

As for the cartoon faces, I've been doing those for sixty years. Just start drawing. Winging it. See what comes out. Exercising the visual thought buds.

 

This post by my good friend Alfredo Medina is turning into quite a detailed thread. A celebration of the newly restored Notre Dame de Paris and a record of our work using Revit and other digital tools to explore it's history. That was a wonderful example of using the open source principle across a truly global group of collaborators.

I'm still going through old papers, digitising what I can. Slimming down the body. Slimming down the worldly possessions. Those are key goals at this point in my life.

One set here dates from my first degree at the Bartlett School, UCL. I was more interested in the counter-cultural vibe of London than the taught courses, but design projects were also good.

I did try to do a bit of research into the practicalies of building from time to time. That manhole drawing is quite prophetic. A few years later I built some manholes in my bricklaying phase. We had a visiting lecturer from Germany who was a bit of a pioneer in tension structures which were quite a new development. A group of students from the year above me built one in the UCL quad. Wish I had photos of that.

The lecture on history of various building technologies fascinated me and remains influential. OK so technology evolves. Just how does that work?

 

The other images date from 1987 (16 years later) I was now a lecturer at University of Zimbabwe and these are my original drawings for a discussion of steel window and door frames and detailing them for the conditions and common practices of Zimbabwe at the time.

A mixture of observation and invention. I've always been like that.

EVENTS TO REMEMBER

 

The clubhouse itself is probably Brian Johnson's best known design. It features on the Emerati 20 Dirhams note. Back in the day my office band played several gigs there. Very special memories.

I count myself very fortunate to have been part of this remarkable practice for more than 20 years now and leading the BIM initiative for most of that time. Brian has many skills. His design sense and ability to manage clients impressed me very early on. Clients can be their own worst enemies at times but he can usually steer them away from the rocks.

 

 

But the biggest takeaway from last night is the team spirit that he has cultivated at GAJ over the years. The work environment in Dubai can be quite harsh, but the atmosphere at GAJ has always been very positive.

Thanks to everyone there for contributing to a great evening.

 

Well this is interesting. Sorting through my old diary folders on Onedrive, I came across my tenth anniversary at GAJ. So half-way through the Dubai adventure with all its ups and downs.

To mark that milestone I was allowed to choose a set of key players from my BIM team and take the out for lunch. As it turned out this was my last "all you can eat" splurge before I was hit by a diabetes diagnosis and catapulted along a crash diet to lose 33kg in 18 months.

Apart from my huge stomach, the memorable feature about this group photo is those faces. People who I was very proud to know. Quite diverse in background, personality and role, but each one a star performer in their own right. Apart from me, they have all moved on to success with other companies. More power to them.

Soon after this I embarked on a series of "BIM breakfast" talks. It was a monthly event, and my first effort was entitled "seven stages of a BIM addict" Where do creative thoughts come from? I was not a natural performer, either as a musician or a public speaker, but I forced myself to try and somehow I discovered surprising and spontaneous talents within myself.

As an aside, I have just embarked on another radical restructuring of my diet to reverse the gradual upward slide of the last couple of years. The diabetes has not yet come back, but all the same I need to lose 10kg to get back to a healthy weight before I retire.

 

AHD-PND (ACRONYM HEAVEN)

 

American Hospital Dubai. Lots of shady outdoor spaces and mature palm trees. The architecture isn't exceptional, but it's crisp and confident. What do you want from a hospital anyway? Easy on the eye, practical, reassuring... Just a touch of class. For the first 65 years of my life I hardly went near a hospital, but for the last two, this place has served me well.

So I'm back in the Dubai of many faces after a long and varied trip. Hopefully the first of many to the US during the English winter. My retirement plans continue to shape up, step-by-step (whether or not I actually stop watching)

 

The best thing about the building where my Dubai home-office is located is the curved facade with overhanging balconies. The detailing is not great, but the form is bold enough to compensate. On the other side of the scales we have poorly planned features such as the banks of AC units on full display every time I walk out for a bottle of milk.

Would I like to live in a stylish apartment in one of Dubai's fashionable districts? Maybe.

But that bird has already flown, and in some ways I prefer to stay grounded, living among the ordinary people who have come here from all around the world to work long hours in demanding jobs to give their families a better future.

That was also my story.

 

Looking back at 2019, the year of Project Notre Dame. We never received any recognition from the most senior management of Autodesk, but many of those in the next tier down gave us much encouragement.

We were a team of about a dozen, spread across the globe, all volunteers, working for the hell of it, for the learning experience, fot the comradeship. Each of us chose what we wanted to contribute, keeping in touch via Slack and BIM360. Two of us gave presentations at AU towards the end year and at various other forums both live and virtual.

The collaboration came to a natural conclusion after almost a year, with the onset of the pandemic and we all moved on in our different ways. It was one of the most enriching experiences of my BIM career. A totally spontaneous collaboration with no monetary rewards or official support.

 

I stumbled across the Enscape images of the apse this week by accident. I can't imagine the project without that capability, provided by a team who have been very supportive of my voluntary work and who have definitely transformed the way architects visualise their ideas.

You can download the model in three non-editable formats from the link below. Feel free to use it for educational purposes, but please credit the source.

way we build / Notre Dame

 

JOURNEY'S END (MOTOWN POPPIES)

 

More post-hoc research into buildings I snapped in my brief visit to Detroit City Centre.

One Woodward Avenue designed in 1969 by Minoru Yagasaki who was also behind the ill-fated World Trade Centre in New York.
43 Storey Ally Detroit Centre by Philip Johnson et al circa 1990. I have never been a big fan of his post-modern period. The building is OK, I guess, but to me it's a pale shadow of the Art Deco towers I discussed a couple of days ago. 

 

The Renaissance Centre of 1977 by John Portman with its glass tube aesthetic, including the 73 storey central tower. Owned by General Motors with a prime location on the riverside overlooking Canada. It's kind of dated and simplistic but I imagine many Detroit residents are very fond of it.

Hudson's site mixed use development by SHoP architects is the pick of the bunch for me, at least in terms of its contribution to the skyline. It seems that the form of the tower was reconsidered during construction, including a twisty version.

 

Passing through Basingstoke in cold misty autumn weather. Fallen leaves in the park. Romantic view along London Street. Purples, browns, greys and greens. So different from the Florida I was in just days ago.

Here everything is close by, walking distance. Buildings huddle together against the cold. I spent a very pleasant afternoon with my son inside a new sports bar. Three pints of English beer and a plate of fish and chips. Watching a tightly fought rugby match while probing the nuance of our slightly different takes on the US election.

 

Returning home through Jacob's Alley via an archway opposite the rather splendid portico of the Reformed Methodist Church, and a piece of street sculpture vaguely reminiscent of Barbara Hepworth. Bronze on a granite base. 1993 but I style and substance harking back to at least 30 years earlier. I would have loved to hear my dad's assessment of this work. He also did a couple of small sculptures of "the family" (I still have one in carved in wood)

I'm always struck by how many points of contact there are between British and American culture, but yet how very different they remain in some quite fundamental ways. I love them both and it's a great privilege to be able to move between them so seamlessly.

 

 

Poppy Day, Diwali. Bonfire Night. November is a time of Remembrance and ritual in the UK spanning across different times and sub-cultures. It seems apt to have these events just as winter is knocking on the door.

Boy scouts marching and the war memorial lit up at night. Diwali dancing and a visit to the vegetable market. It's been a brief visit, with a fair amount of sleeping off jet lag, but it was good to squeeze in these activities. A reminder of the distinction pace of life here, as compared to either Florida or Dubai.

I have never quite been sure how to fit monuments and statues into the story of architecture. Forms without function. Symbolism untethered from the realities of daily life. Domestic bliss abstracted in bronze. The horrors of war frozen in cold neoclassical stone.

One last cold weekend in England, en-route between Florida and Dubai