HARARE - DUBAI - THE WORLD

 In 2002 the Zimbabwe economy was in terrible trouble. Work was hard to come by and we found ourselves doing mostly quick concept designs that never got off the ground.

This proposal for a Medical Centre in Borrowdale Brook went further than most but eventually foundered. It captures a period when I was keeping several applications open on my task bar and switching between them. True multi-tasking in Windows NT4 seemed like a big breakthrough.

 

 
A couple of years later, I switched over to doing almost everything in Revit. If I was a bit younger probably I would be going through another period of agile switching back and forth. (Rhino, Dynamo, Twin Motion, Mid Journey, whatever) But I realised during Covid that there were other things I wanted to do with my spare time rather than learning new software packages.

 

  

Here I was using Autocad for detailed plans, Elevations and Sections, photoshop for applying colour, Archicad for quick 3d views, acrobat for compiling everything into design brochures to submit to the client. We also had Lotus Smart Suite, which came with the computers we bought when setting up our network.

There were some good things about that little package, but I've forgotten the details now. 🙄

 

Back in Dubai. Sunbathing through the fly mesh on a very mild afternoon. I arrived in my flat from the airport at 2am. Trying hard to make the inevitable chores into a bit of an adventure.

I just invented a new tool called the "scrape'n'sweep" hashtag#perfect-for-pigeon-poop-problems

Like most great leaps forward in technology it involves combining two previously unconnected ideas into a single solution to a known problem.

Of course technology, like language is an aspect of human culture. As such it evolves by a process which is far less well understood than its biological namesake. But we can safely say that the idea would have to "catch on" to "perpetuate itself" and become that great leap forward we sometimes imagine that we can identify in the incredibly complex web of interactions that we like to label "progress"

I enjoy engaging with technology, both manual and digital, simple and complex. But I'm reluctant to make value judgements about where this is all going. Time will tell. Definitely some aspects of "progress" have been very positive. Others, not so much.

My biggest contribution, I think, has been using BIM tools and processes to think about "the way we build" in different times and places. And trying to connect that work back to the ordinary routines of daily life. That's the essential thread running through my posts here.

For what it's worth.

 

Some of you will be aware that I have this little hobby called "the Way We Build" In essence it's just my lifelong passion for buildings and cities. It began with a belief that the best way to understand something is to draw it. Of course it helps to travel to different places, to have spent part of your life working in the building trades, to read books and so on. But for me, drawing is central.

I am using that word in its widest sense. A drawing is a model, an abstraction from reality. It can be a pencil sketch, a physical model, freehand, drafting board, digital. So my hobby began with hand sketches and collected images. It proceeded through CAD and took on a new dimension with BIM.

 

 

I am currently organising my various forays with the BIM pencil, and uploading them to the Construction Cloud. It will take quite a while to knock it all into shape and of course it's a limitless endeavour. I just want to tie up the loosest of the loose ends and pass something coherent down the line as my legacy.

ACC is essentially a working space, and from there, as various topics take shape I intend to export useful content to the Web site that Daniel Hurtubise set up for me. So between this and my blog, perhaps a broader public can get an idea of what my little hobby is all about.

https://lnkd.in/dPRsqR7C

https://thewaywebuild.io