BERKSHIRE NIGHT OUT

Solid modelling in the Revit family environment. Slower than the surface modelling of Sketchup but better parametrics and embedded data. Best of all it integrates fully with the project environment for robust BIM workflows.

I moved on from Sketchup 20 years ago, Autocad hung on for little longer for some marginal work. But Revit has been my BIM pencil for so long now it's hard to think of losing access after I retire fully.

 

 

This is St Bartholomew's Arborfield by James Picton. Victorian Gothic Revival. I was there two weeks ago with my Reading friends, enjoying the architecture, soaking up the history and context, taking pictures (never enough) pub lunch together close by.

Friday was a good day to take a first crack at the massing model. Lots of rough estimating here, which is one of my favoured pastimes. A bit like freehand sketching. Drawing "by eye". Playing. Music "by ear".

Each church is unique so there's minimal use of parametrics. I've been learning how best to tackle these forms. Mostly extrusions, but what's the best choice of work plane? When to use join geometry? How to minimise voids? Striving all the time for greater fluency. Enjoying the challenge and delving deeper into the geometry of these churches.

 

Friday night out. Still hunting down new Sports Bars within taxi range. Just hit happy Hour nicely at The List, Al Jaddaf Rotana Suites. Quite a class act. The food was great. Flamingo theme picked up here and there in honour of the bird sanctuary close by. It may be a desert landscape, swamped by concrete and glass, but there is also nature to be found in Dubai, delicate as the city is brash.

 

I will gloss over the massing of this hotel. Not to my taste. But at close quarters it works, outside and in. Not exactly groundbreaking, the blend of modern and traditional is commonplace now. But it does exude quality and for the average non-architectural visitor it’s sure to delight.

As a non meat eater, I’m mostly faced with fish and chips or some kind of curry at these bars. In this case the fish was a cut above the average. Nice crispy batter that even held up as leftover lunch the next day. 

For the uninitiated Berkshire is pronounced "Barksher" and it's the ancient diocese and county to which the Arborfield church belongs.

 

 

HEALTHY DUBAI

Another day in the life of a BIM addict. Online research into the area around Hartley Wintney. We passed through the village on my recent church visits. Most of this research was done in the early hours of the morning. I'm still adapting to time-zone crossing on my way back to the Dubai.

 

Some of these churches were attached to country estates, others were in a village. Manor houses existed from medieval times, maybe Saxon. These were often replaced by Georgian Palazzos or Victorian Mansions with extensive parklands to match, as both the aristocracy and the new merchant class displayed their growing wealth. Hartley Grange and Elvetham Park. Architects Samuel Teulon and ??? Hotels and luxury apartments now of course, wedding venues.

Such are the stories that reach out to me as I continue to develop my map of Hampshire Churches using the power of Revit. Layers of intelligent objects.

 

 

On Wednesday a visit to see my oncologist. Passing the bird sanctuary at the end of the Creek with the Burj Khalifa in the background. I created a timeline with Excel to explore scenarios of monthly and quarterly injections as the clock runs down towards Xmas. Another family gathering then in Basingstoke. The question of whether I can extend my visa to align with the UK tax year.

It will all work out. One step at a time but it sometimes feels overwhelming. Winding up 22 years of my life. 45 if you count Zimbabwe. Back to the homeland. What's left of it. The churches and country estates remind me of what once was. A proud inheritance, warts and all.

 

Thankyou Dubai, thankyou GAJ, thankyou Sukoon, thankyou American Hospital. 21 years and counting of safe, modern, stimulating life in the Emirates. This is multiculturalism working well. Secure borders, regular visa renewal, no right to stay for the unemployed, but everyone is polite and respectful, genuinely interested to talk to people from different backgrounds.

Of course it is not perfect. Sometimes it feels like living in a theme park. Wage differentials are extreme. Health and Safety on building sites has improved a lot since I first arrived, but still a work in progress. Forget about marching in the streets or even reading criticism of the government in local newspapers.

 

Still, millions of people have come here and transformed their lives and the lives of extended family back home. As Thomas Sowell says "there are no solutions, only trade-offs." Dubai has made successful trade-offs and shown other Middle Eastern countries how to engage successfully with both East and West.

I will be moving my primary base to England next April and there are many things I prefer about the country of my birth. But Dubai has been kind to me and gained my respect.

Just setting up a colonoscopy almost a year on from the surgery to remove a tumour last December. Routine check, no queues. I will miss this hospital.

 

 

CHURCH VISITS CATCHUP

More images of St Bartholomew's, Arborfield. I'm actually back in Dubai as I write this. Slowly coming round from jetlag and general exhaustion. It's always interesting to make that sudden transition between different climates and cultures.

In my last post I suggested that the chimney served a fireplace in the Vestry, but checking more carefully it could be from a boiler in the basement accessed by external steps. There is no evidence of pipework and radiators, but that could have been removed long ago. There are overhead radiant heaters now at the junction of wall and ceiling.

Mostly carpeted now, but the original floor tiling is still visible in the chancel. Typical geometric patterns and colours. We used to call these quarry tiles and they were commonly found in the kitchens of old terraced housing, laid directly on a bed of coarse sand or blast-furnace slag.

 

I like to find areas where the construction is revealed. Timber lathe providing kek for lime plaster. Like the floor tiles this is very familiar to me from my days as a jobbing builder in Sheffield in my twenties.

The north wall of the vestry is moving away at one corner. Could be the thrust of the rafters or maybe water-related settlement from the downpipe at that corner. A crack measuring device has been placed to record change over time. "Watchful waiting" as my oncologist might say.

 

 

Church no 3 from last Saturday in UK. All Saints Swallowfield. This one is medieval with a complex history of alterations & additions (par for the course.)  There is a Norman core, including a splendid North doorway, no longer in use and superseded by a timber-framed south porch. I take this to signify a change from the main entrance facing the lord of the Manor to one that faces the village.

 

The bell tower is also a later edition and timber framed with brick infill. Quite distinctive in its form and to my eye attractive in its idiosyncrasy. The rest of the church is flint faced with stone trim. Plain tile roof, typically Hampshire. Some delightful carved stone detail ranging from the chevrons around the old door, to modestly voluptuous window tracery, and a sun dial projecting out at an angle.  Attempting to come closer to a true south-facing orientation I guess. Not sure why the original church was almost 30 degrees off the traditional East-West alignment. Maybe a reason will emerge over time.  It’s almost at right angles to the river and to the road, but why would that matter?

 

There is a floor grille running down the central aisle (heating pipes, defunct?) which will please my friend David Wood. Not easy to spot on these images. One puzzle though. I didn’t spot a chimney, or any access down to a basement boiler. The grill is Victorian looking, so surely coal-fired.  Maybe the flue was capped off? Seems a bit odd.

Anyway another successful image-gathering session for an intriguing old church. One more to come from that day with my long-time friends from Reading.  A hearty thanks to them.

 

LIVERPOOL 1 - READING 2

St Mary Shinfield, the shining fields of the flooded river Loddon. First of four churches I visited with my good friends from Reading, to conclude this visit to my future Basingstoke home. Early start to catch a bus and a train, then zipping around by car. 

The church has a very dodgy-looking squat brick tower. The medieval tower was blown up by parliamentarians during the English civil war and the replacement seems to have been hastily and shabbily thrown together. All the same it’s full of character, wrinkled and scarred like the skin of an old pirate.

 

The rest of the church is a bit of a mish-mash also, several different materials and styles jumbled up in an ad-hoc manner. The effect is not unpleasant if you have a taste for the picturesque. Obviously do, although I'm up for a bit of Palladian, cool symmetry at times also. Takes all types, and it's part of the wonder of a deep historical perspective that you begin to see the value of multiple disparate viewpoints.

 

 

We couldn’t get inside, but pressing phone to glass was quite an effective substitute. It seems to be well loved, as do many of these village churches in my study area. Clearly it holds a different place in a different society compared to its medieval origins, but the continuity of use and meaning is no small thing. We all reinvent the world as we stumble through life, but it makes more sense, to me at least, if we are connected to a long thread that weaves itself into the fabric of human history.

 

The second of four churches from Saturday was Victorian Gothic Revival. Better in real life than photography suggests, I'm not sure why. The architect was from Liverpool where he designed mostly commercial buildings in classical/italianate modes.

What brought him down South to try his hand at church design? Strictly speaking the first three churches are in Berkshire, an archdeaconry under the bishop of Oxford, hence the codes. OB72A = St Bartholomew's Arborfield. As you can see, it's on the opposite side of the Loddon Valley as it winds North-East from its source in Basingstoke to meet up with the Thames, just to the East of Reading

 

The spire is all stone, the roof tiles polychrome. The window tracery subtly varied with hood mouldings terminating in crockets. As usual you can spot, the  vestry by it's chimney. Some comfort for the vicar while dressing in winter.

The architect's name was James Picton. He started in his father's business at 13, absorbing the world of a joiner and timber merchant before entering an architect's office, eventually taking over that business and entering the world of local politics, influential in the establishment of Liverpool Central Library by act of parliament in 1852.