BRICKLAYING & CHURCHES

 

In 1975 I did a 6 month course in Bricklaying at the government retraining Centre in Handsworth, Sheffield. I used to cycle there every day across the lower deck of the Tinsley Viaduct which carried the M1 motorway across the Don Valley with its belt of steelworks.

Mr Cox was a softly spoken man in a white coat, with a long career behind him. A patient teacher who gave us a sound grounding in the trade. The lads were varied and full of mischief. I knew a few women who were starting to venture into the building trades but they weren't from a working class background. Those societal changes were yet to come.

A sketch from my pocket notebook captures the grip that the world of bricks took on my imagination. That world of building sites and masculine banter dominated the seventies for me. It helped to toughen me up and prepare me for the move to Africa that took me by surprise at the beginning of the 80s

 

 

This is a map I am working up in Revit. Hampshire churches. Churches within reach of Basingstoke where my grandsons live. I've visited quite a few of them. Saxons churches with wooden spires/belfries and flint walling.

I like mapping things in Revit, embedding data in little generic objects. It's the process that counts and how it helps you to get your head around a set of buildings in a particular landscape. Looking up information online. Gradually adding more instances, more layers of information.

The Meonwara was a tribe of Saxons who settled in the Meon valley. Mentioned by the Venerable Bede in the 8th Century. How do you transport yourself back to that world?

My chosen approach (called "the way we build") is a blend of hands-on research techniques. Modelling in Revit, drawing and painting, collecting and organising information from books and Internet searches, wherever possible, group collaborations to tap into a broader set of ideas and approaches.

I have visited some of these churches. My grandsons live in Basingstoke. Actual visits to old buildings are a vital part of the method, always asking questions. How was that actually built? What purpose does it serve? How does it fit into a sequence of technological change and stylistic development?

 

 

Model progress on the first of the Meon churches, in Hampshire that are at the core of my current #bimpencil study.

Corhampton was the second in a group of three Saxon churches that I visited with my family in the summer of 2019. Sunny weather, all three of my children, both grandsons and one daughter in law. Fond memories for sure.

The church in the photo is Exton. Similar language and scale but different in detail. The window and door families present an interesting challenge. Just going for a simplified approximation at the moment.

 

 

Weekend draws to a close and I'm quite happy with the progress on Corhampton Church in the Meon valley of Hampshire.

I'm doing this based on a couple of dozen photos taken in 2019 plus information from the Internet. There was a framed floor plan in the church that I snapped, and of course Google earth gives a rough guide to size, but for the most part all the dimensions in my model are estimated by eye.

I love to do it that way. Forces me to think hard about the way a building is put together and to take decisions about the level of abstraction that I should use. I suppose the day will come when others will just tell "the machine"... "take this source material and convert it into a BIM model of a Saxon church."

But why? The whole point of this exercise is to stimulate my brain into thinking more deeply about what these old churches mean to me. It's the process that matters, not the end product.

Call me old fashioned 🤣🤣🤣

 

 

In 1976 I was working as a bricklayer on sites in and around Sheffield. It was a brilliant summer and we had our shirts off for weeks on end. Oh to be young again. 🤣🤣🤣

I had a little pocket notebook where I would write diary notes when the mood struck me, and sketch little doodles like these hod carriers. Fortunately I digitised those pages before coming to Dubai, so I have this amazing resource for peeking into my past in a very intimate way.

Around this time I discovered Dr Feelgood and a new faith in the blues roots of my guitar playing. Vivid memories of going to a concert at the City Hall, probably with Pete Donoghue, a local lad who was giving up on bricklaying just as I was going in to it.

Such is life.

 

MUSCAT & MORE

In 1989 I resumed an architecture career that had been put on hold for 17 years. That's not quite accurate. I had decided to abandon architecture at least a year before completing my first degree, and I really had no intention of resuming that vocation until a few months before these drawings were done.

It was a real struggle at first. 8 years as a bricklayer, then another 8 teaching in Zimbabwe, then starting again at the bottom of the ladder.

I just caught the tail end of "drawing by hand" but wouldn't have missed it for the world. It allowed me to experience the transition to CAD and later the transition to BIM, feeling like a pioneer in both cases.

 

Can't believe it's almost a decade since I started working on this hotel project. The BIM team gets brought in when concept design is approved. That's how it works at GAJ. I understand why, but doesn't mean I think it's the best way.

All the same I enjoy picking up a fairly well resolved concept and setting it up in Revit for further development. Sometimes I'm involved all the way through to contract documents but more often I will move on to a new project around the end of Schematic.

A year ago I had to pass through Muscat to get a stamp on my brand new British passport, having been forced to abandon Zimbabwean citizenship after more than 30 years. So I got a chance to visit the finished building for the first time.

These images are from the Revit model, but I will do another post with photos from 2022

 

 

Mysk Al Mouj, a hotel in Muscat by GAJ, the firm I've been with since I came to Dubai, 19 years ago, fleeing a collapsed economy in Zimbabwe.

I know the building quite well, having started the Revit model and worked on it for many months. But I had seen the built object until just over a year ago. Credit to Jason and the concept team for a great design, to Nandish for taking on the project architect role and protecting me from exposure to endless tedious meetings. 😜

So these are photos taken in January 2022. Very proud to have been involved in this project. Looks great, even on an overcast day with scattered showers.

 

 

Not sure what to say about this sketch, which I think I captured with my first digital camera when I was preparing to move to Dubai. I didn't manage to capture everything I had filed away in five decades, but I did what I could in the knowledge that there was a strict limit to what I could take with me.

I think the original dates from the transition from schoolboy in Barnsley to architecture student in London. Quite how it came into my head to choose this subject matter and this style, I don't really know.

It has a kind of Nordic saga feel and I really like it, but beyond that...? There is some pencil work, some red fibre-tip pen, are the waves water colour? I have an idea that the mountains are red ink, applied with a brush obviously, but when did I get that ink, and did I ever do anything else with it?

Lost in the sands of time.

 

 

In 1990, I applied to enter the fifth year architecture class at Wits. (a grand old University in Joburg) Joining at that stage was somewhat unconventional, but I got an interview and made myself an illustrated CV.

I think the text was done on a computer, the drawings are clearly done by hand, maybe reduced a bit on the photocopier, then physically pasted onto the page. Carefully white out the edges (there was a thing called process white, but I probably used Typp-Ex.) Then make a couple of clean copies of the whole thing. Did we use spiral binding?

This is a double page spread from that document. Two of the projects that I worked on during my two years as an architectural assistant at Jackson Moore, a period when I was testing out the idea of picking up the threads of an abandoned career after a 16 year hiatus.

Seems so long ago.

 

PUMPKIN SQUAT

 Back to my 2011 pumpkin adventures. A smooth and regular Doric column is perfectly, but when it morphs into a pumpkin it should be coarse and lumpy with some random shape variations.

This remains one of the major challenges with a program like Revit. How to represent wonky walls and irregular elements like thatched roofs? Materials can take you part of the way and judicious use of distorted geometry in family editor can sometimes hint at organic form.

Please don't suggest AI. Something deep inside objects to using algorithms to simulate the beauty of hand crafted work. It needs the human touch. That's the whole point.

                                   

 

In 1981 and recently turned 30, I received a letter out of the blue. One of my old college tutors thought I might be interested in a volunteering opportunity in newly independent Zimbabwe.

For the past 8 years I had been working in the building trades at a very basic hands-on level, including a 6 month training programme as a bricklayer. Did I want to join an experimental school, training kids from refugee camps to build there own school.

It was exciting and scary in equal measure. As preparation I was sent to an "Intermediate Technology Workshop" in the midlands for a couple of days. That was a lot of fun.

These are some of the sketches I made in the days following the workshop. My attempt to internalise what I had learnt. Wedging clay and moulding hand-made bricks.

I love digital tools and the benefits of automation, but there is also something magical about the old ways of working. I do hope that my grandsons' generation will find ways to keep both traditions alive. A word of plenty where people experience the joy of making beautiful buildings with their bare hands.

In 1980 two friends from my student days invited me to join their project, self-publishing a book about the "squatting movement". Nick was the editor, Caroline the designer and I became illustrator.

This is a sheet of typographic elements, drawn with Rotring pen on tracing paper, photographically reproduced and pasted up by hand, by Caroline on the page layouts.

Most of these are conceived as borders and division strips. A few years later we would have done this digitally, but it was a great privilege to experience the old-school approach in its dying moments.

"Squatting, the Real Story" As illustrator I was responsible for the section pages of this 1980 book. Caroline and Nick gave me a concept which I had to flesh out.

In this case my challenge was to create a series of cartoons, drawn in different styles, as if by several artists. Some were reinterpretations of published drawings from pamphlets and community papers. Some were new concepts devised for the book.

The policemen joke is an archive image from 1946. All the section pages featured a pale grey background. Done with an adhesive film called Letratone.

A second sheet of "squatting jokes" from 1980. Towards the end of my time in England. I had been doing hands-on building work in Sheffield throughout my twenties and was now casting about for my next adventure.

I tried very hard to vary my graphic style from joke to joke. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to become a full-time graphic artist and illustrator. But instead it was my fate to switch focus repeatedly. No regrets.

The overarching theme here is "history" The idea that "the common people" have struggled against the power of landlords from time immemorial. A little naive perhaps, but we were young and it was all done with a cheeky grin and a sense of mischief.

  

         


Not quite sure how this happened... A bit of digital cheating but still kind of impromptu. Chuck was always a huge inspiration. Saw him twice, once in London around 1972 and a few years later in Sheffield with my old mate and bricklaying partner John Hobson.