JANE IN THE WOODS

 

Eye-to-eye with Jane Austen this morning as I shop for fresh fruit and veggies in a rare break in the drizzle.

I got a half hour of walking in and got some very useful shopping in. Thai spring rolls, mixed pickles, (gulf style) a jar of garlic paste and Tunisian dates. Reminders of Dubai while revelling in English weather and environment. I miss my colleagues at Godwin Austen Johnson though 😍

Got my first hormone injection on the NHS this week. Took a while, but just in time to maintain continuity.

 

 

This is my local church again. All Saints, Basingstoke. I've been messing about with these street level lancet windows. Only partly parametric right now. The geometry of the top portion is tricky enough without that extra demand.

To get these bevels, the "cut" is replaced by a set of voids. There is an extrusion following the shape of the glass, locked to ref planes on the interior and exterior face of the wall.

I end up doing some drafting to set out the curved wall sweeps for the bevels, and there's a lot of trial and error, with the occasional "failed to create..." message. One trick I use is to start the path for a curve with a short vertical. That way the profile can be edited in a true plan view.

The glazing is a nested family and so far I only have the height under parametric control. All the curved geometry is locked to the springing point of the arches and moves up and down in lockstep.

Good enough for current purposes.

 

Following on from yesterday, I have revisited the clerestory windows and cleaned the geometry up a bit.

As usual it's an iterative process: building, reflecting, looking again and again, trying another approach, doing something else, coming back with fresh eyes.

There are probably a dozen different window types in this church, so plenty to keep me busy as I settle firmly into life in England. hashtag#dubai is often in my thoughts and my friends at Godwin Austen Johnson. An innovative practice in an innovative country. So proud to have spent over twenty years working there.

 

I'm working on variations to my walk through the park (I also have street walks) Today I was trying to stay in the shade which took me through to an unmowed patch that I later learned is the Butterfly Garden. It's a rather splendid display of wild flowers and long grass. I will definitely make this a regular diversion.

Just beyond that, is a small woodland area, just enough to give the feeling of being enveloped in a cool shady grove. Emerging from this I found myself on a familiar path heading past the map where I discovered the butterfly name.

All this seems to be native Hampshire species, but soon enough I came across a splendid conifer which I take to be part of the romantic planting scheme for Goldings Park when it was attached to a private house.

I'm looking forward to my first full year of exploratory walks, striding out from home, these snapshots becoming familiar places as they pass through the seasons.