FASCIO FINALE

 Giuseppi Terragni was just 28 years old when he started working on Casa del Fascio in Como, Italy. He was the archetypal tragic hero, producing a remarkable body of work before being drafted into the army and sent deep into Russia. His physical and mental health were shattered and he died in Italy before he was 40.

The central space at Casa del Fascio is a re-imagining of the renaissance cortile. An internal space, but with light penetrating from all directions and galleries around the edge. The ground floor opens across its entire width at the press of a button, connecting to a public plaza.

It doesn't seem to have aged a minute. Is that important? Not sure. I'm all for buildings that have a timeless beauty but this one is firmly situated in the industrial era. All the same, it's quite remarkable.

My rendering technique in 2013 involved combining a shaded image with a quick Render using Revit's internal engine. The images aren't hi-res but they are quite effective for most purposes.

This is a building that is difficult to fully grasp by looking at images, however well thought out. For me there is nothing to compare with building a model, pondering over difficulties, composing sheets, adding annotations. That's the experience I crave.

Studying history with my BIM pencil.

 

 

Last two images of Casa Fascio. The exterior is a pure Mental Ray render. Remember the excitement when Autodesk bought that software and bundled it into Revit with a simple interface designed for people like me with low expertise in the complexities of high-end rendering.

External views render quite quickly to an acceptable level. Interiors, not so much. But they can be good enough to provide the extra materiality in one of my composite images. Meanwhile the black lines give extra definition to the glass blocks and the floor tiles. You need to set the Revit materials up properly so that the appearance image and the hatch pattern line up. Hard won trickery that is already slipping into the memory hole. 

 

 

The interior view is looking towards the back of the building. The internal elevations of the atrium are almost as varied as the external facade. Meeting spaces on the left, cellular offices elsewhere. Complete transparency to the outside world, front and back.

The sides of the building face onto relatively narrow alleys. Hopefully this render conveys that fact. Different fenestration for the stair, the vertical stack of washrooms, and the cellular offices.

How many modern buildings draw on the geometry games that Terragni pulled here? More than a few. I'm not sure how to assess Terragni the man. Was he a naive young idealist carried away with his belief in abstract ideas? Was he an opportunist, willing to trample over the rights of lesser mortals. I really don't know. But I do think that the self reflection that goes along with researching and building a model like this, helps me to put my own failings in perspective.

I need to tidy this model up a bit and add it to thewaywebuild.io   So much unfinished business.

 

 

KING BEE IFTAR ... +

 

GAJ iftar at One Za'abeel, The Link. Great crowd of people, classic Dubai "wow factor" design. World class food, of course. It's nice to do this kind of stuff, once in a while. hashtag#how-the-other-half-live.

The views are beyond spectacular. The interior design is what you would expect. Maybe I've seen too much of that kind of stuff, but it doesn't do anything special for me. Creative and competent, but not as impressive as the architecture. Just a personal view.

To be honest I think "groundbreaking modern" is a bit of a dead end, but like I said it's fun for a special night out. I've enjoyed my time in Dubai. It has its contradictions, but I honestly think it's made a huge contribution to the Middle East and to the world beyond. I'm glad to be living in an unspectacular suburb with low to middle-income residents from all over the world, looking to support their families back home.

Still it's good to experience the extremes. I'm reluctant to leave this place completely. Let's see what the next couple of years has in store for me.

 

I'm trying to share more of my musical history to the cloud. My life has not been earth shattering. No fame and fortune. But looking back now, it's been much more of an adventure than you might have predicted say 50 years ago.

And there's a balance of creative endeavours, from my early obsession with painting and drawing, through successive bands in Sheffield, Harare and Dubai... to the BIM pencil / WayWeBuild work of the past 20 years or so.

It's been a great pleasure to rediscover these old cassette recordings, to convert them to mp3, and to explore ways to add visuals. This one uses an online tool called FlexClip and the open source video editor Lightworks. Pretty basic but everything worthwhile begins with baby steps.

 

More slides from RTC 2023 in Auckland. Casa del Fascio by Giuseppe Terragni modeled by me in Revit to illustrate my idea of "The Way We Build" - studying history with BIM. History/Culture /Technology it's all of a piece in my mind's eye. The journey of humanity in the long age of settlement, shelter, specialist skills. .

It's a fascinating building from a turbulent time in the history of Italy. It reworks the Palazzo form of the renaissance but in a totally modern way. Lots of subtle geometric games here. For starters all four Elevations are totally different... while still fitting together quite seamlessly.

 

Each window opening is in fact a complex, multi-layered affair. A combination of slender masonry slabs and posts, operable steel windows and external blinds. Security, shading, ventilation, light. We tend to have a narrow conception of what a window should be, based on standard practice in the place we live for the last couple of decades. But the possibility space is huge and Terragni has come up with fascinating examples here.

They are quite difficult to make as Revit families. Do you cut out a rectangular opening and then put back bits of wall as extrusions within the family. You will end up with lines where you don't really want them. I opted to delete the cut opening and use voids. Also tricky, and the wrapping of finishes will never be quite perfect.

I don't really do these conference talks any more. It's a huge amount of work. My age and my health issues force me to focus my attention very carefully. But for ten or fifteen years they motivated me to really push the envelope on my vision of "the BIM pencil" and "the Way We Build"

 

JADDAF-FASCIO

 Al Jaddaf is /was a historic area along Dubai Creek. When I first moved here it was a large expanse of sand where traditional Arab Dhows were built. Just how authentic the construction methods were, I wouldn't like to say. But it was a fascinating relic of old Dubai, before the incredibly rapid modernisation process began.

Jaddaf Waterfront was the choice for my Friday night out this week. It's still under development, but shaping up well and within striking distance of International City. I don't know what the Masterplanning guidelines are, but the styles range from contemporary takes on Arabic and Classical, to "irregular rhythms" modern. Breaking up the grid and varying the spacing of elements from floor to floor.

I don't know if there is a other name for this strategy, but it seems to be "of the moment" and works quite well in this kind of development. The colour palette ranges from off-white to strong ochres, contrasting well with the blue-grey reflective surfaces of glass and water.

You could suggest that this style has had its day as the backlash to globalism sets in. Maybe so, but the paradox of Dubai is that globalism is part of its local brand. It is an international city with laws in place to ensure that Emirati identity and control are never threatened.

These are policies that don't translate directly to Europe or North America, but surely have something to offer. Certainly I question the attitude of many who sneer at the Gulf States as some kind of affront to the "human rights" mantra of the EU.

Something about glass houses and stones perhaps. More importantly, for me, Dubai is a beacon of hope in a deeply troubled region.

 

The conference theme was Embracing Change. Time to stop grumbling and show what we can really do with BIM. Of course I took this to mean CLextending its reach beyond the narrow confines of commercial work. I unveiled my vision of "the way we build"... Studies of the history, technology and cultural meaning of selected buildings.

I chose three Office buildings from the twentieth century. Compare and contrast, like a modern day Bannister Fletcher, but with the passion of a Vincent Scully, a Lewis Mumford, or perhaps a Reyner Banham.

The three slides shown here were created with Revit. Off-label, experimental use to create diagrams, such as we might include in a concept design report. BIM from cradle to grave, not just a tool for production drawings.

As I remember, the continents are floor slabs and the passage of time is captured with phases. Pushing the boundaries.

 

2013 seems a long time ago. I still had a gigging band, but it was coming to an end. I was starting to explore YouTube as an alternative outlet, but making the mistake of investing far too much time adding visuals to the recording.

I say too much because I couldn't keep it up. On the other hand I'm glad I did these few carefully produced songs. My musicianship was at a peak, as you would expect from the regular band practices and gigs. My guitars and amplifiers still worked. Whatever video editing software I was using gave me what I needed to tell a story in a much more sophisticated way than recent efforts.

I was also on the edge of obesity related diabetes as you can see. That's such a common problem these days. One of the down sides of an affluent society. I was lucky to find a path out of that trap, but my food addiction is still a huge issue. Just about keeping it under control.

I haven't played "walking the dog" for some years now, but it's one of those numbers that kept reinventing itself as my musical journey took new directions. I have performed it in Sheffield, Harare and Dubai, the three cities that defined my adult life. I saw Dr Feelgood tear through it in a gig at Sheffield City Hall. A splendid edifice in the Greek Revival Style.

Distant memories but powerful still.

 

What young man could resist the idea of contributing to the rise of the "third Rome" What young man of extraordinary creative talents would turn down the commission to design a new Party Headquarters in his home town in the foothills of the alps? What young idealist could fail to believe in a party that claimed a respect for tradition alongside a commitment to a modernised Italy, with control over the Mediterranean Sea?

It's difficult to see beyond our revulsion for the term "fascist" even though the Fascio is a symbol of ancient Rome, a bundle of reeds, "unity is strength". The same idea expressed with different words can have almost the opposite emotional impact.

 

I built simple block models with black and white cubes, to understand the basic space planning as it developed from a simple renaissance courtyard form into highly nuanced modernist expression. Another abstract analytic model focused on the usable floor plates and placement of vertically connected functions within this scheme.

Sadly this kind of schematic work is rarely done in Revit. But that was my dream and part of the meaning I ascribe to the term “BIM pencil”.