PRIVETT PERSON

 

Yesterday morning I squeezed in a couple of hours refining Holy Trinity, Privett. This will be the next Blomfield church to gain a site context link. Not sure exactly when though.

Tomorrow I fly to Heathrow for a family Xmas. Time with my children and grandchildren will obviously take precedence over the BIM pencil. Most days I just dive into my work and forget to take a snapshot for a "before and after" analysis. Yesterday I remembered to do a save as before reloading.

There is some tracery to add to the tower window, but before getting to that I found myself elaborating the buttresses and the west doorway. Also a little row of blind recesses above a slight setback of the top section.

 

The main event Wednesday morning was getting my prostate cancer injections before I travelled for Christmas. The switchover to NHS care awaits in April. Hopefully not too stressful.

They were just setting up a Christmas display at the hospital. No qualms about what to call it here in a country with. "Sharia compliant" law. No gradual slide into "happy holidays" I don't have any anxiety about EID & Diwali being called by name and celebrated in the tradional way. Similarly nobody in Dubai seems to feel excluded or offended when you wish them happy Christmas.

Just saying.

 

My flight to UK was half empty. Always a blessing. It was also delayed by the weather in Dubai. Lots of steady rain, low visibility, flooding. Good time to fly out perhaps.

Friday was a crisp, sunny winter's day in Basingstoke. Brings back childhood memories. I went to "carols" in my grandson's school playground. Several classes chose a Xmas Rap. What is the world coming to. Later on the rest of my immediate family flew in from Singapore and Florida. We ordered Nandos and watched grandchildren get reacquainted.

A great start to my Xmas holiday.

 

Starting to explore the context for Holy Trinity, Privett.  Built by Gin magnate, William Nicholson who developed the nearby Basing Park estate. Classic Victorian benefactor story. The church is over-grand for its location and is now classified as redundant. Still a beautiful building in a fine location. Blomfield at the height of his powers really.

Don’t know a lot about Basing Park, Sydney Smirke was involved at some point apparently and the house was rebuilt in the 1960s. The Martineau family held the estate at some point, Hugeunots, also involved in brewing among other interests, and prominent in Birmingham. So lots of hints at a complex history but I haven’t yet unraveled the story.  Village, Manor House and church plus the rise of the merchant/manufacturer class.

 Wonderful stuff.

 

 

PARTY TIME

 

Preston Candover. Village along the road in the valley bottom, Church to the right at the junction. Today I added trees to this view, not as many as there are in reality, just as many as I felt I needed to convey the message.

I'm not happy with the grey blocks that are pretending to be houses. Just put that on the list along with people and a couple of gravestones. But next up is probably another camera angle, something a bit closer.

 

GAJ Xmas party last night. Had a great time. Not sure if I will be able to attend any more of these. It seems I now have five thumbs on each hand. Turns out that practising every day for a week is not enough to get your skills back 😂

Nobody warned me about the lifetime achievement award. What a wonderful surprise. Can't believe how quickly the time has gone. I won't be leaving Dubai until April and I do intend to come back on visits. So many good friends. Special thanks to Brian, and Pratheep for taking care of me.

What a wonderful firm.

 

 

Dubai Metro is coming to International City. It will be too late for me, but it's good to see it happening at last. Such a dense concentration of lower-middle income residents out here, about half an hour drive from the city centre.

I'm assuming it will be a raised track but no sign of them working on the supporting pillars yet. Several cranes, probably the station locations. I've watched so many major projects being built from the ground up in the time I've been here.

Easy to point the finger but there is a dynamism in this place based on welcoming workers in from all around the world in a very controlled way. Opportunities for all, from top executives to deliveroo drivers. Far from perfect but a fascinating place that holds its head high.

 

 

So far I've been adding pitched-roof "houses" to the context models using "model in place" Time to switch it up and create a parametric family. The chimney has a visibility parameter. Turn it off for short returns etc.

The intention is to represent villages as they were in 1900, when churches were still the centre of life. Choice of materials for both walls and roof. Independently variable in all 3 dimensions plus roof pitch. No windows or doors for the moment.

 

PRETTY PORTSMOUTH PIX

 

Some days are just better than others. Or maybe it’s just different. Maybe you need the hard slog day to wake up next morning and break through the barrier, play some guitar in the middle and close out with a couple of sexy images.

I discovered that the top layer of transparent toposolid subdivisions were the source of all my problems. Deleting these gave me a file size 300x smaller! Goodbye pain. All the boundaries still exist as red lines floating in a flat plane, so not very hard to trace out a road network as a white floor slab.

 

 

Next came families to represent the housing terraces. Then a break to rest up and practice some songs for GAJ Xmas party. Finishing up with a couple of camera views lightly processed in PIXLR. Been a while since I did that.

 

 

So I’m happy with the context views (St Mary’s Fratton) for now at least. Time to go inside and do something similar to the West Woodhay church. That kept me busy for a couple of days and of course I discovered new things along the way. There are quite a few questions I can’t resolve with my current information. Probably needs a site visit and a whole bunch of interior photographs.

 

 

All the same it’s looking pretty good with the hammer-beam roof and the wrought iron chancel screen. Another day or so, back and forth between the model and the sheet. This is my goal for each of the churches I’ve been working on. Condense the design and its context down to a single sheet so that it becomes easier to compare and contrast. Think Bannister Fletcher for the digital age.