Printing Cirencester Abbey

With the design phase coming to an end and the production phase starting to take shape the models that are being created are looking really beautiful. The sheer amount of interior and exterior detail on the model for something of its modest size is such a joy for me to watch. I am particularly pleased with how the window mullions in the East and West windows are forming and I look forward to seeing them fan out to their final form.

My model has been developed from the highly detailed, but severely flawed, Cirencester Civic Society digital model and I have been printing small maquettes of various parts to test the transition of the digital to the physical. By printing these abstract extractions of Cirencester Abbey my concentration has been drawn to specific structural and spatial functions of the building. Such as the model of the tower which illustrates the specific primary structure holding its mass high above the Nave like an illustration from “Mortal Engines” where the tower stands tall over the rest of Cirencester as the town rolls across the world.

As the print is begun, the base is laid across the printer, followed by the slow and captivating appearance of the plan of the Abbey which itself begins to grow out of the ground.

This process of growth, almost organic in its nature, epitomizes the hard work of the Abbey 900 group in making new memories of this historic space. Developing the ideas about the building layer upon layer upon layer, and pulling the observations and understanding of the past into a modern interpretation to exist with us now among our experiences of the architectures of contemporary Cirencester.

I am looking forward to feeling the finished model in my hands.

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