SOUTHAMPTON SLUGS

 I've been quiet since I got back from UK. A combination of factors. Disrupted sleep patterns, some routine medical stuff, and I'm kind of bogged down on the Hampshire Churches project.

Well not exactly bogged down, but definitely facing a long hard slog. It's easy enough to collect 20% of the data and set up sheets that look quite impressive. Collecting the rest, chasing down errors and conflicts, then tidying everything up... That takes much more time and the effect on the sheets seems minimal compared to the extra effort.

So I've just been putting in a few hours each day, as energy permits, thinking about a post from time to time, but in the end deciding to just buckle down to the routine effort. Gathering data on 400+ churches, a few at a time. Gradually filling out the map and the schedules.

Am I past half way? I certainly hope so because the mapping stage is just the beginning. I need to select at least 10% of the data set and do some modeling. Did I bite off too much? I don't think so. At least I have no regrets. This is a terrific way to learn.

 

 

Southampton. I can't remember whether I ever visited as a child. Looking forward to two or three day-trips down there by train and bus probably. Explore a few churches, get a feel for the place. That will be over the next year or so, hopefully.

I have two main sheets to define my area of study. For the most part there is space to tag the "pin" that marks the position of each church along with an image. But in a dense urban area like Southampton the churches are too close together, so I'm setting up third sheet for these.

The map begins as a highly abstracted set of shapes, a bit like the underground map for London. As the work proceeds I am adding more detail wherever it seems important to give context to the church locations. Step by step. Learning as I go. History and geography. Fascinating stories.  Sharing this work with a small audience keeps me motivated, provides essential feedback and opens up the possibility of others building on my efforts in the future.

 

 

These pics are from before I went to UK. Exercises in curtain-paneling-by-pattern that I upgraded and uploaded to ACC. I called this “the slug” and it was inspired by Zach Kron. If you divide a torus with rectangular panels, each ring around the donut contains identical components. You can then slice that torus in a way that makes it look more “nurbsy” than it really is. There will be a bunch of on-offs at the cuts of course but still a substantial amount of repetition, giving a nod towards affordability.

 

Of course I then went ahead and introduced pyramids of different heights, once again reducing the repetition factor. I was exploring Revit schedule to Excel workflows in those days to automate the randomizing. You can control it so there are only 3 or 4 different heights. Anyway, that was a brief interlude in my overall history and I haven’t done this kind of thing for a long time. I’m sure the younger guys are using a completely different approach to achieve these whacky concepts now.

 

My hope is that by packaging up 15 years of blog explorations into the cloud, Daniel and perhaps a few other close friends, can help me to pass this work on to future generations. I know that a few students have been inspired by my blog over the years, so it would be nice to keep that going. Not necessarily the most amazing work Revit/BIM work out there, but I think I have followed an unusual path. What did Frank say?

"I did it my way."