TECHNOLOGY in architecture.
When my father worked at the Council, I remember seeing great drawing pins holding down trace paper over originals for tracing. By the time that we had our own office in the 13th floor of the Murray and Stewart building in downtown East London everyone had progressed to masking tape. We even ventured to get a photocopier. A small, yet heavy A4 machine that needed 3 stages of original and then a positive and a negative. It got very hot, was awkward to use and was uneconomical. I think we donated it to the East London Museum, but would be surprised if they kept it.
I missed the era of "blue prints" although did see them about. At university we used a liquid amonia printing machine to get copies of our drawings. The positive drawn on tracing paper was laid over the sensitise yellow paper and fed through a UV light. It was then developed and fixed by passing it through the amonia liquid. A flexible tube led out through a window in an attempt to keep the working environment acceptable.
Our office though sent our drawings off to an office supplier shop that did printing as well.
We did the same thing when we moved to our new Devereux Avenue premises in Vincent. My father, always looking for savings, procured a second hand drawing printing box. First you needed to get the "negative" print by laying the drawn positive over the sensitised paper in the sun or at least bright light, preferably under glass to keep it flat. Then into the veritical wooden box into which you placed the loosely coiled "processed" paper. Then you poured liquid amonia into a saucer and placed that at the bottom, hoping that the vapours would process the sheet above it. All this was done while holding ones breath and then running for an open window, eyes smarting. It is hard to believe that we really did this. An archaic method even then and probably laughed at by anyone coming into the office at that moment. Naturally we resisted this and sent most of our drawings down the road for printing.
Our first professor at University, "Jeep" Snyman, had the foresight to get us onto a computer course - we before computers were generally available. So we learnt Basic and Fortran and Cobalt and other computer languages - without ever seeing a computer! When I did eventually see a real combuter a year later, I saw a set of 3. They were about the size of our kitchen fridge and located in the university library building. Large cassets spun on the front of each. The atmosphere was supposed to be completely controlled, but the flat roof of the futuristic library building, so recently built, already leaked and water cascaded down close by.
We did the computer course alongside students of othe disciplines and also did applied maths on the same basis. Two weekly tests were taken using multiple choice options on punch cards (monkey puzzles) which were then assessed by computers somewhere. Such was my introduction to the digital world just opening to us back then in the '70s.
I was reasonably good at some aspects of applied maths, but hopeless at others. I bought myself a battery operated calculator quite early on. But these were banned during exams as not every student could afford one. They used to chew up AA batteries very quickly.
Architectural drawings were done on drawing boards on stands which could be either spindly and cheap or large and expensive, yet adaptable in height and angle. Drawings were taped to the plastic overlaid surface. The drawing paper came in rolls and was either a transparent lightly textured surface or the more expensive, but more durable plastic. There were two typical drawing aids. One was a plastic horizontal straight edge on cables that kept it parallel. One then used an adjustable setsquare on it. At hand was a scale ie a ruler with various scales. The other was a large metallic arm that was fixed to the drawing board and had vertical and horizontal scales on it that were also used to draw lines against.
My father would be a stickler for neat lettering and new trainees would need to spend days practicing this. At one point he was offered a lettering machine, a forerunner of CAD, by George Albert, at great expense and was very tempted to get it. But by that time we were well into using stencils. Drawings began in pencil and were then inked to create clear plans for printing.
Errors and updated in drawings meant erasing the ink. If hand erasers did not suffice, old fashioned two edge razor blades were often used to take the ink off and this affected the paper surface too. We then needed to rub talc on to regain a suitable surface. Electric erasors were also used - a hand-held device with a spinning plug of erasor of selected abrasion. A small thin stainless steel sheet with shaped holes enabled more accurate and selective erasion.
If all of this sounds exhausting, it was. We once employed a young draftsman whos suffered from dyslexia. His father was the janitor for our 13 storey down town office block and he lived in a house on the roof. He was actually quite good. But one day we found that he had nearly completed a comprehensive drawing in mirror image. He had to redo it completely which took hours. (It takes mili-seconds to flip a drawing in CAD).
Drawings were usually done at A2 size or even up to A0. The old standard had been "double elephant" (26.7 x 40 inch / 678.2 x 1016mm). This had the great benefit (compared to the smaller printed drawings that subsequently became popular) of being easily displayed to the clients or on site for everyone to see. These large drawn originals were stored rolled up in the packet that the paper came in or in large wooden cabinets with several drawers or hung in metal cabinets with metal spike hangers, these drawings having had taped edges with holes to hang then with.
The design stage was usually done on light and cheap "butcher paper". It was usually referred to as "bumph". As a young stiudent I went into an office supplier to stock up on it. I was greeted across the counter by a new pretty assistant. She was blushed when I asked for "bumph".
Ink drawing was done with Rotring pens (red ring being their identifying mark). They came in a range of sizes and could be as sharp as needles. They clogged up easily and needed regular cleaning in a solution within a special container. They also broke or buckled easily if bumped and this happened rather frequently as we walked around or gesticulated with the pens upcapped. To counter this I would hold them back to front, but accidents still happened and I have some tiny "tattoos" on my hands where I bumped the points into them.
Many practices, both architectural and engineering, jumped on the CAD (computer aided drafting) pretty promptly. We held back, mainly due to the expense. This was not just the computers themselves, but the software licenses and printers. The use of just A3 print outs were becoming popular and often issued as portfolios.
However I did follow the evolvement of CAD locally through attending trade shows and seminars during the 1980s. Two names stand out. One was that of the Skok Brothers who seemed well in the forefront internationally, at the time. (I still find that name when associated with machine tools in South Africa and presume that this evolved from that time). The other was Allyson Lawless who developed AllyCad aimed at engineers.
They used to boast that they could accomplish curves at a good scale - something taken for granted now. Engineers seem to adapt to CAD mor readily than architects as their drawings were more skeletal than those of architects. I would watch their drawings being printed, a process that took ages with pens of 3 primary colours jumping accross a sheet itself darting over a roller. Clever and fascinating to watch, but unconvincing to me to take on. We would wait until things improved.
Besides the cost of transitioning to CAD was the downtime that would be needed to train and be trained. By this time, at least locally, CADDI|E was becoming the preferred choice by architects.
It was a big enough upgrade when we acquired a new typewriter that had a tiny screen that showed the few words being typed. And at times we had either a rose or a golfball type writer. Remember those?
I taught myself to type and needed the secretary to prepare documents and letters for me less and less. So when we did eventually acquire some computers I could do all that myself. I did an intro course to CAD and attempted to do door schedules on it, but found that awkward. Generak correspondence, specifications etc were fine.
We acquired 3 computers. One each for me, my father and the secretary. We were down to one draughsman and he brought his own one in. And they were all stolen one weekend. Workmen had left scaffolding uo outside the window and I had failed to repair a window catch.
We replaced them and continued.
By the time we got into computers, they had already evolved quite a bit. My wife's uncle Freddie had a Sinclair that look did the absolute basics. The Daily Despatch was progressing quite fast. When she covered the Grahamstown Arts Festival she was lent a laptop, a heavy thing in a carry case. When they graduated onto newer computers she obtained one of the rejected models. It did not have a hardrive, but operated off two floppy disks (really floppy disks), one with the operating programme and one to take the results.
When we emigrated to Scotland I did a crash course in CAD. By this time AutoCad was the popular choice. When I first began to work here I had not quite completed the course and pretty much learnt as I worked. But I got reasonably proficient at it. Working with layers, different line types, colours, hatching etc was standard routine. We could overlay, inport, share across disciplines and with contractors quite readily. I was happy with that until sophisticated 3D CAD work became a bit challenging. But by then I was nearing the point at which I needed to work from home.
I did small jobs and emailed my drawings to printers in Paisley where I picked them up.
I should at this point also mentioned our fax.
We bought one second hand from a local political party and tended to get some of their messages on it.
When I applied for temporary residence in the UK I did so under the Ancestry route instead of the Marriage route, although some questions seemed to overlap. The form was lengthy and took all night to come in by fax. A continuous coil of paper greeted me on the floor the next morning. (The UK wary of arranged marriages, asked "Have tou met your wife yet?).
Building in South Africa is much cheaper than in Scotland. Not only due to labour costs, but there is less need to insulate against the cold. It is more likely a case there of insulating to keep the heat out and retain a cooler environment. But then it is also a lot less sophisticated.
Scotland's building regulations are even different to the south of us in England and this has a lot to do with efficient building systems and their insulation. So much is led by the R-factor. (In construction, the R-value is the measurement of a material's capacity to resist heat flow from one side to the other. In simple terms, R-values measure the effectiveness of insulation and a higher number represents more effective insulation. R-values are additive). And then there is health and safety, disabled access etc etc. I only once had to wear a hard hat on a building site in South Africa, while here it is essential, and high viz clothing, and safety boots........
ALLYCAD : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allyson_Lawless
SKOK : https://www.skok.co.za/
