CECIL R.I.P.

Earlier this year, a dentist with more money than sense shot a lion in my home country.  Also this year, my daughter took a trip back home to attend a friend's wedding and stayed at a game lodge where she was able to take an early morning walk with a live lion.  I know where my sympathies lie.

So this post is dedicated to Cecil, and to African wildlife in general, what's left of it.  It's basically an exercise in abstraction.  All our models are abstractions and it pays to be more aware of this than we often are.  We have to simplify, to make choices about what to represent and how to represent it. 
What is the model for ?  How will it be used ?

 

This model exists for educational purposes.  It's a research exercise.  I'm doing it because I'm fascinated by the history of buildings and the people who made them.  So I am modelling very simply at first and adding layers of detail as I start to understand more clearly what Soane was up to.

There is a frieze that runs around the exterior.  On two sides it contains a Greek key pattern, one of Soane's favourite themes (he had a few).  On the moulding above this there are lion's heads at intervals, looking almost as if they could be water spouts, but clearly not.

I want to make a very simple, native Revit placeholder family to represent these.  My starting point was to make a callout from the front elevation and gauge the size.  Another callout from a section view adds information about the third dimension. 

One annoying thing about Revit.  You can't just draft stuff in the project and copy-paste it into family editor.  There are workarounds of course, like copy-pasting lines drawn in sketch mode.  In this case I'm happy to take a screen shot and drop this into family editor, scale it up, good enough.

I settle on a side-on extrusion to represent the forehead an mane.  Then a blend, drawn in plan, for the snout.  After studying this for a while I decide to add eyes (void extrusion) and a mouth (sideways
void extrusion)

That's it.  Make it work plane based, load it up and place.  There is one above each column.  These are arrays, so I can nest a lion into the group.  Most of the pilasters are embedded in families, so I can also nest my lion's head in there.  Just a bit harder to get the placement right, but trial and error works for me.

Maybe you like it, maybe you don't.  But look at it in context.  It's a small item on a broad facade.  Even when you soom in on the parapet it's difficult to make out much detail.  Too much modelling and it will turn into a black blob.  I think it's about right.  We could always add an embedded CAD object that only gets turned on for really close shots.

If you feel you can do better, that's great.  But please try to keep it lightweight and able to be used in a 1:100 elevation (or 1/8 inch to a foot as the colonials have it)  What I would really like you to do is to take the principles I have just demonstrated and model some other useful stuff for Project Soane in a similar manner.  As you can see, it's not that difficult really.

 

BULL IN A CHINA SHOP

That's me.  Plugging away at my current hobby horse.  So my eyes fell on Tivoli Corner, and first of all I had to do a quick job on the amphora.  Actually it's fine as it is for most purposes, but my perfectionist side was peeping through.  If you look carefully at the handles the curves are not quite smooth.  To be fair the same goes for Soane's drawing :)

There is a wonderful tool in Revit's drawing set that is often overlooked.  It's in the middle of the second row, and it's called "Tangent End Arc".  That's the secret to drawing smooth curves with consumate ease.  Just keep going and every curve will be tangentially to the previous one, absolute magic. 

I also fixed it to have a square base which is the usual thing, and is visible in my site pics.

But what I really wanted to tackle was the Bull's Head detail from the freize.  This only features at Tivoli Corner, in fact the friezes on either side don't even have the key pattern, quite plain.  Makes for a nice contrast, which I'm guessing was Soane's intention.

Once again I'm looking for a simplified abstraction that will do the job at coarse to medium scale.  And it's a sideways extrusions cut be void extrusions drawn from the front.  After that we add some eyes and nostrils simply by editing the sketch for the sideways solid.  Then the ears are just tubes: an extrusion sketched in front view.

This family will attach itself to a planar face, but it doesn't do so well on the curve, can't pick up the tangent properly.  That's OK we just place them on a horizontal work plane, nudge the first one into position, then array this radially. 

In fact this is a wonderful setting for Revit's dynamic array feature.  I know there are 4 items between two columns so I just set the second column as the end of the array and type in a number 4.  Then you can just type in a new angle and a new number of items.  Rotate the whole array about its centre point as required.

Which brings me to the attic.  I quickly knocked up a placeholder family for this.  You can see it in the perspective above.  It's lacking in detail, but we have some fairly good reference material.  Here is a presentation drawing that Soane had done.  Notice there are no vases on the curve.

Then there is a very grainy photo which does have vases on the curve.  Did Soane do this, or were they added later ?  The current ones are definitely by Baker, he made a lot of alterations to Tivoli Corner.  But the grainy photo predates his work.
 

For the attic itself we have a pretty good drawing.  I used this for the placeholder family and it's still embedded in there in case you want to pick this item up and run with it. 

Here is a shot of the family geometry.  I didn't get much further than this.  Just started addin a sweep, but it's very crude.

Here is the study sheet that I did for the whole process.  You can see there is a garland between the bulls heads that also needs to be abstracted / simplified and incorporated as a family.  Any volunteers ?

 

STOCK OFFICE FIREPLACE

Would someone like to spend an hour or two upgrading my fireplace family ?  I have made a placeholder which I believe is the correct size, and I have reference photographs taken earlier this year. 

There are also drawings downloadable from the online archive which show not only the fireplace, but also the flues leading up to the roof, and the cleaning arrangements in the cellar below.

I will be uploading these resources to the Stock Office folder on A360 so anyone who is registered for Project Soane can download them and take a shot.  I think this is quite a good place to start because it's a splendid example of Soane's style: classical in inspiration but simplified and abstracted to the point of looking quite "modern".

It makes use of standard Soanian devices: circle and square, incised parallel lines, muted and neutral colour scheme.

There is a version of this fireplace in Alberto's splendid model of the Stock Office, but my photographs weren't available to him, so the results are slightly different.  For all I know, his interpretation is more historically accurate, but personally I find the design as photographed more convincing, and more in keeping with the interior of the Stock Office as a whole.

So if someone would like to model this up, I would be most grateful.  I have a million other items on my to do list.  (seems like it, anyway)