Eiffel Over

Author: Oliver Broadbent

  • The Song of the System

    The Song of the System

    Every system has a song.

    Whether that system is the collection of components in an engine. Or the hum of a collaborative team. The tap-dance of ants in an anthill. Or the sound of life in a wood.

    Every system’s song is unique. Like no two performances of an orchestra are the same. The music depends on the complex interaction of who is playing, the acoustics of the hall, who is listening. And many other things.

    The song of the system is its heartbeat. A readout of its vital signs. The signature of its thriving. A trace that it exists.

    Some system songs you can hear very clearly. For others, you have to be listening very carefully.

    Someone recently told me that fish sing to each other. Why is this news? Maybe because this wasn’t expected: we weren’t listening. But now that we know it’s there, we are changing the input range of our sensors and discovering the sea is full of living sounds. Of song.

    Songs are patterns. When we know how they go, we get to know when they change.

    Every system has a song. The question is, are we listening?

    Further reading

    • Time for new patterns
    • Read two more articles about the sounds of fish – here and here.
  • Time for new patterns

    Time for new patterns

    We see patterns. We think in patterns. We create patterns.

    A pattern is something that repeats. A drum beat. An oscillation.

    Patterns make things regular and therefore intelligible. Patterns help us predict what will happen next. Out of a sea of random events a pattern can feel like a life raft. Or pieces from which we can assemble together to create a boat.

    The OED says the word comes from the Middle English ‘patron’ meaning something to be followed.

    This is interesting. What if the patterns we are following are no-longer serving us? What if the drumbeat is no-longer leading us in the right direction. What if the oscillations are going out of control?

    Then we need to learn to see new patterns. We need to learn to think in new patterns. And we need to create new patterns.

    That is why at Constructivist I am starting to build the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design. It is a guide for engineers (and other humans) for thinking in new, regenerative patterns. At the moment it is lots of pieces, but my hope is that these pieces can be assembled to create a useful boat for designers to clamber aboard.

  • The joy of the ‘train classique’

    The joy of the ‘train classique’

    France is well-known for its TGVs. But there is a place in my heart for the ‘trains classiques’, the older, long-distance trains that still trundle round the older lines of France’s rail network.

    I like that they don’t go very fast. I don’t want to get there quickly today.

    I like how the seats are like sofas; ideal for napping.

    I like how they purr. There’s a deep whir that I feel in my stomach. I higher pitched whine that wibbles my nostrils. And when someone opens the end-of-carriage sliding doors, the loud waah that washes through the carriage, like an approaching TIE fighter.

    View of the Loire near Blois seen from the train windows

    I like the big windows (the opposite of the miserable arrowslits you get on Cross Country train services in the UK).

    I like all the unhurried journeys I’ve taken on these trains before, from one regional town to another. Often on holiday.

    I like the system of regionally-subsidised train networks (that these trains usually run on), which help keep trains running to remote parts of France.

    Photo showing cycle storage on Ouigo Trains Classiques – 2 bikes per carriage.

    I like the ample bike storage space – two reservable spots per carriage.

    I like how these routes are usually cheaper than the TGV.

    And I like how these older trains ply a sort of parallel, older network, of places in between or far from the big TGV stations. It somehow feels like more of an adventure.

    Want to ride on a train classique? Your best bet is to book a journey between destinations on the SNCF Intercités network – these are the trunk routes where TGVs don’t operate. Or, as we are doing today, travel on the Ouigo Trains Classiques network (these travel between Paris and Lyon and Paris and Nantes – both also served by TGV trains, but the Ouigos classique travel down the old slower routes.

    Read more about the train classique rolling stock.

  • Using ChatGPT to generate ideas

    Using ChatGPT to generate ideas

    In this post I share some initial thoughts on how using ChatGPT to generate ideas changes creative thinking for engineers, and other humans. 

    My simple model for idea generation is that an idea is simply a new connection between existing elements in the mind. It’s a practicable model giving us two things to think about in creativity. The first is what information do I have in mind when I am having my idea. The second is how do I form connections between these bits of information to create something new – to create an idea. 

    As James Webb Young describes in ‘A Technique for Having Ideas‘, the process is akin to using a kaleidoscope. The elements of information are the bits of glass at the end. Multiple shapes, colours and sizes. Turning the kaleidoscope causes the elements to rearrange. The new patterns we make are ideas.

    I call a kaleidoscope for having ideas a kalideascope. The process of building, filling and turning the kalideascope is a metaphor for designing an idea generation process.

    Using a kalideascope for generating ideas

    The first thing I get people in my training to think about when having ideas is what information they are putting into the process. I call this ‘filling the kalideascope’. There are two kinds of information we put into the kalideacope.  The first I refer to as ‘information in the moment‘. It includes information from a design brief, from site, from stakeholders, from colleagues and from precedent projects.

    The second kind of information we put into the kalideascope we can think of as information gathered over time. In other words from experience. From experience of living in the world, seeing it and thinking about it. Experience includes things we have done professionally. I also emphasise all the experiences we have had outside of work. The things that are unique to us. 

    The second part of the process is the forming of new connections. This is looking at things in new ways. Acting it out, asking what if and using your professional palette are three of my favourite techniques to teach. 

    These two processes – filling and turning the kalideacope – provide a simple framework for thinking about our idea generation process. 

    How does using ChatGPT to generate ideas change things?

    None of this creative process I described above needs a computer. But of course we have been using computers to enhance our creative process for decades. The internet gives us access to endless new information. And through our interactions online we can find a similarly endless stream of prompts to help us form new connections. 

    So how does using ChatGPT to generate ideas change things? Here are my initial thoughts.

    Availability versus accessibility of information

    When you forget someone’s name and it suddenly pops into your mind, that information suddenly becomes accessible. It was always there. Someone didn’t whisper it in your ear. The name was tucked away somewhere in your brain. In other words, the name was available. But something changed in that moment and all of a sudden it became accessible.

    ChatGPT uses the text-based content of the internet as its source of information. Via search, this information has always been accessible to us, but if we don’t know where to look, it is not available. ChatGPT has vastly increased the amount of accessible data. This does not mean that all information is available to us. But information on topics commonly published online is now much more accessible. 

    This means that whole new data sets can be brought into the creative process. It is as if the number of pieces in our kalideacope suddenly become many orders of magnitude bigger. 

    The potential for new patterns has vastly increased.

    New connections

    Gathering information is one part of the idea generation process. The other is forming new connections or associations. Humans are pattern-spotting animals, with a prefrontal cortexes especially evolved for the task. But just because we can spot patterns and have new ideas, doesn’t mean we can do it all the time. 

    Lots of my creativity training focuses on what to do when you have had one idea and can’t think of another. Various cognitive biases mean that we tend to prefer thinking about the ideas we have already had rather than think of new ones. My ‘ask what if’ technique is explicitly intended to overcome this creative tiredness. 

    But ChatGPT never gets tired. You can keep asking it generate new possibilities in response to a question.  

    Introducing the kalAIdeascope

    I think we need to rethink the kalideacope for the AI century.

    I am calling an AI-powered kaleidoscope for having ideas a kalAIdeascope. The process of building, filling and turning the kalAIdeascope is a metaphor for using artificial intelligence to help us generate ideas. This tool is available to currently available to everyone who has a decent internet connection. We have lots to learn about how to use it. 

    The process of building, filling and turning the kalAIdeascope is a metaphor for using artificial intelligence to help us generate ideas.

    Some final thoughts

    Judgement – None of the above says anything about how decide if an idea is any good. And that is how I teach creative thinking. Start with ’no’ turned off, and generate ideas. Then test the ideas for how well they work. How AI can support in the testing is a topic for another post.

    Spotify effect – I think my relationship to music degraded when I got Spotify. Suddenly the availability of most of the world’s recorded music on my phone at any time numbed my curiosity. What will be the impact of the accessibility of so much more information and ideas?

    What would Proust say? (see my previous writing on Proust) – his view was that the role of the artist is to express their inner world to the outside world. If more of our ideas are ‘externally’ generated, then I find myself even more drawn to what is going on in people’s inner worlds. 

    Finally, my thanks for Mary Stevens and Nick Francis for the many conversations over recent months on this topic that have prompted this post.

  • Vision for a regenerative programme of forestry and building maintenance at Hazel Hill Wood

    Vision for a regenerative programme of forestry and building maintenance at Hazel Hill Wood

    This afternoon I met with two trustees of Hazel Hill Wood to develop some ideas for a funding bid to support more regenerative use of timber to maintain our off-grid buildings. I said at the end of the call I’d write up some thoughts on a what a five-year plan could look like. Here is what I wrote down – stimulated by a very thought-provoking conversation with my excellent trustee colleagues. I’m putting it here rather than on the Hazel Hill website as this is by no means policy! Just a set of ideas, captured to enable further discussion.

    Five-year vision for developing Hazel Hill as a centre for regenerative forest management and traditional construction skills.

    At Hazel Hill Wood we have a unique combination of sustainably managed forest, off-grid buildings and a charity with a mission is to use timber from the wood as part of a regenerative cycle of building repair. Our ambition is to work with these gifts to increase local biodiversity and woodland thriving, build community resilience and wellbeing of all who come into contact with the wood.

    While we reach all of these ambitions to some extent through our current charitable activities, we see the opportunity to unlock greater benefits for the ecosystem and local community by establishing the wood as a centre for learning about how timber can be used as part of a regenerative local construction material. We describe this process as regenerative because it has the potential to have zero negative externalities: harvesting timber in the right places can actually increase woodland health and biodiversity; the timber we harvest can be used to re-establish a range of historical, rural practices, including coppicing, hurdle-making, horse-drawn timber extraction and traditional green-wood construction. Training local people in using these skills can help to enhance the rural economy while helping to maintain the heritage of local buildings. And the wellbeing of all is enhanced through extended contact with the living world through nature connection. 

    To shift to this mode of operation we envisage taking three phases over five years. 

    Phase one – from seed to seedling

    In this first phase we assess the state of the current system and create some of the infrastructure to enable this new activity to happen at the wood. 

    • Forest survey – establishing the health of the ecosystem, possible timber for harvest now and possible timber for future extraction and opportunities to enhance biodiversity through timber harvest.
    • Building survey – establishing the long-term maintenance needs and priorities of our heritage timber buildings.
    • Skills survey – understanding the local skills landscape and how training at Hazel Hill wood could enhance the local economy.
    • Re-establishing connection with rural construction tradespeople.
    • Creating working area – wood seasoning shed, tools shed and outdoor classroom
    • Initiation of volunteer programme for simple construction skills using timber in the forest.
    • Initial harvest of coppiced timber
    • Initial harvest of roundwood poles for seasoning.

    Phase two – from seedling to sapling

    In this phase we increase the scale of our regenerative work, starting to work with wood harvested and seasoned in Phase one while increasing our harvest of timber from the wood. In this phase we grow our education programme around how we see the wood and the buildings as part of a continuum, a process of which we are the stewards, adapting to the needs of the ecosystem and the people who we bring here to heal and learn through connection with the living world.

    • On-going habitat creation and monitoring in areas where timber has been harvested.
    • Maintenance forestry – In order to grow trees for timber, some tree pruning needs to be done to create timber of good quality. We need to develop local skills in how to plan and carry out tree maintenance.
    • Running courses in green wood construction skills.
    • Using seasoned, sawed timber to carry out major upgrades to the structure of our heritage buildings, including new decking for the Oak House and Forest Ark.
    • Invitation to other local crafts people to run training courses at our site.
    • Growing programme of volunteer activities engaged in a range of conservation and heritage construction projects.
    • Growing education programme, offering training in the thinking behind the regenerative principles on site.

    Phase three – from sapling to tree

    In this third phase the operations are more self-sustaining. The process of continuous cover forestry is well-established in the wood, with timber harvested at a rate of 1% per year providing a steady rate of firewood and construction materials for the charity as well as surplus for sale into the local economy. The programme of rural forestry and heritage construction skills training is self-sustaining and as well as bringing in revenue for the charity, is part of the active continuous maintenance of our unique heritage buildings. The site will be well known as a demonstrator project for regenerative principles that can be replicated more widely.

  • Experiments in limiting modal shift

    I’m enjoying listening to ‘World without Email‘ by Cal Newport. I’ve been an aficionado of inbox-management techniques for many years, but this book adds in new layers of systems and computer science understanding that I have found fascinating.

    The book is a critique of the ‘hyper-active hive mind’, the term he uses to describe the way many knowledge workers now interact with each other. I don’t plan to summarise his key points here; rather to chart an experiment I am running.

    I am interested in the idea of minimising modal shift, in other words, how often my brain flips from one activity to another. It is amazing how hard it is to stay focused on just one task, even if it is enjoyable. There are so many factors driving me towards the pull of distraction: the dopamine hit of a new message; the fear of social ostracisation if I don’t respond to a message; the design of the software itself leads me to distraction.

    As Newport describes, we slip into just firing off messages because it is so easy, but by doing so we use up the attention capital of everyone else. It is a case of the tragedy of the commons. Instead, he says, we need to do the hard work of inventing systems for how we should communicate more effectively for different tasks.

    Today I have enjoyed spending some time with Regenerative Design Lab co-convenor Ellie Osborne designing a process for short-listing, interviewing and finalising candidates for the next cohort of lab participants that requires the bare minimum use of our email inboxes. Features of the design are:

    • Agreeing where shared information can be stored – not in an email mailbox.
    • Finding tools to that enable candidates to book interview slots without the need for email back-and-forth.
    • Identifying in advance what things we might need to communicate about and booking in that conversation ahead of time, so that we can save queries for that exchange.

    Setting this system up hopefully means both of us can get on with arranging the interviews with minimal recourse to our email inboxes. And that should mean we can spend more time focusing on the design of the lab itself.

    I’ll report back on how the experiment went.

  • Reading the patterns from the regenerative design lab

    Reading the patterns from the regenerative design lab

    This week I am delving into the data we gathered from cohort one of the regenerative design lab. As I struggle to process reams of text my first job was to convert the text into post it notes of key points on Mural. Next I will start to pull out the key themes, but before I do I thought I would share the pleasing pattern this data makes.

  • An experiment in foundational capital

    Last year I read about foundational capital in Lean Logic. It’s the idea of the capital that systems depend upon to live. For us Earthlings it’s clean air and water, a thriving biosphere, sufficient minerals. But it can also be intangible things: trust, knowledge, peace. In an extractive economy, we seek to mine these resources and use them to create a financial surplus. This financial surplus we can then invest to invest in growth. But not growth of the foundational capital, but growth of the business. In this model the foundational capital is repeatedly depleted. This extraction works for a while so long as there remains sufficient foundational capital, but at some point the foundational capital is so reduced that it can no longer support life.

    The idea of investing financial surplus is so ingrained that it is hard to imagine alternative models. As a business owner, I feel it myself: the instinctive thing to do with any profit the business makes is to invest in growth of the business.

    But we can see an alternative approach in more traditional approaches that seek to re-noursish the growing environment with each harvest. For example, I have heard permaculture teachers talk about sharing the harvest three ways: one part for me; one part for the community; one part for the soil. That final third is left to rot on the the plant to return nutrients to the ground. Contrast this to a more extractive approach, which would harvest all the fruit, leaving the ground more depleted. More profit but less foundational capital.

    Last year I thought how could I experiment with this idea at Constructivist Ltd. A traditional business approach would be to charge clients as much as possible to run training. But that sets our aims against the aims of our clients. The more we can extract, the more profit we can make and the more our clients are depleted.

    Another way to look at things is to say that if we’ve made a profit this year it’s by charing our clients more than we needed to. What is the equivalent of returning this harvest to the ground? Well we could return the extra fees. Another approach is to use the funds to support the flourishing in some way of those organisations that are our clients, which we depend on. The latter option is easy to administer, but the bigger reason I prefer it that it isnon-financial exchange. It is specific, rather than interchangeable (non-fungible), building interconnections and therefore the capacity for feedback. It is also greater than zero-sum (a topic for another post).

    Since most of our work with clients involves direct collaboration with individuals, we decided to return the surplus to the system by running a regenerative thinking retreat at Hazel Hill Wood for this group of individuals. Much like the work done in winter by soil-plant systems – quietly, underground – this gathering deepened connections, allowed knowledge to be exchanged, repaired damage from the last season of growth. In other words, fed the foundational capital of the system we are in and set the scene for a new season of growth on a more resilient grounding.

    In regenerative design we are seeking to create thriving socio-ecological systems. By noticing foundational capital we can start to tune in to how the projects and processes we are involved with deplete or nourish foundational capital. And we can start to think about how to design systems that aim to grow this capital.

  • Regenerative Design Tetris Blocks

    There’s lots of regenerative design thoughts bubbling around between my ears. I often get to a point in my creative process where I feel I can’t write something down because I haven’t written down the previous thing. But I can’t wait to write down the foundation stuff because the new ideas keep coming in. Like blocks in Tetris, they are soon gonna bump again the ceiling of my head. Time to clear some of the shapes in my head and store them here in case they are useful. In my out-tray are:

    Stand by for posts on these.

  • Patterns versus words

    Patterns versus words

    In my exploration of regenerative design I’m often struck by how language is a barrier to exploring regenerative thinking. I can see two things at play here. The first that we may not have the words to fully describe what we imply by regenerative design. The second is that defining being regenerative using the terms of the growth-extraction paradigm (ie our current economic pattern) risks keeping the whole philosophy bound by that original pattern.

    In my application to become an 1851 Regenerative Design Fellow I said I wanted to create a ‘pattern book’ for understanding regenerative design. It was an idea that drew on pattern books in manufacture and it was also a nod to the new pattern for construction that Joseph Paxton ushered in with his sketch for Crystal Palace. But it was also an acknowledgment that words alone may not be enough.

    This week I’m reading ‘The Patterning Instinct’ by Jeremy Lent. As he puts it

    The idea that language- and its corresponding cultural framework – affects the way we think is a key premise of this book.

    Jeremy Lent

    In it he described how humans create new words to describe a particular set of ideas. My example might be the word ‘optioneering’ (which I I dislike but hear often). In one word we combine the ideas of there being a set of options, that they are assessed, and that this be done in a systematic way. Once this new word is developed it is far easier to use it than to create a different term to link together these ideas.

    These words are a way to make thinking easier. All the wisdom of these ideas combined into a single word. Our language is built up of multiple layers of words that contain ideas of deep cultural meaning. This can make it hard to change the way we think. Our existing words are already doing lots of conceptual work and new words have to work hard for adoption if they go against the grain.

    Lent situates his work in the domain of neo-Whorfian linguistics, which takes as it’s starting premise that the way we speak affects how we think.

    The weak-Whorfian approach says that some thinking patterns can be changed by changing the language that we use.

    These insights lead me to think that there may be more to the idea of a pattern book than I had realised. I foresee patterns as a way to transcend words that may be locking us into a certain way of thinking. If so could we use a set of patterns to communicate regenerative design? That’s what I’m thinking about.

    As Lent writes later (pg213)

    If our cultural inheritance compels us to think in certain ways – strong Whorfianism – then there’s nothing we can do about it. If, however, our cultural framing merely encourages us to think in certain patterns – weak Whorfianism – then, by becoming conscious of those patterns, we may have the power to change them.

    Jeremy Lent

  • A myriad of questions about regenerative design

    In my post earlier last week I made the case for regenerative design as a response to the range of systemic ecological, social and climatic challenges that we are facing. As soon as we start talking about regenerative design, a myriad of questions pop up. 

    After six months of co-facilitating the first Constructivist Regenerative Design Lab, I can see these questions settling into three categories. Sorting these questions into groups hopefully gives us a way through them. They are as follows:

    • What do we mean by regenerative design?
    • How do we do it?
    • How do we create the conditions for it to happen?

    I find this separation brings clarity. The first question sets the terms for the answer to the next two. Regenerative design requires a conceptual leap – a paradigm shift in how we see our role as designers. It requires us to think very differently about how design works. It is likely to feel very inconvenient, not to mention counter-cultural, which is why it is important we separate the question of what we are trying to achieve from the ‘how’. I have seen that when we start the conversation with ‘how’, then the concept gets watered down.

    When we can be clear about our aims – and I think the literature is clear, although the concepts are not widely enough understood for them to be mainstream yet – we can start to think about how we do it.

    The answers to questions two and three are likely to be iterative and related. Gaining the opportunity to do regenerative design will inform practice; practice will enable more chances to make the case for regenerative design.

    More blog posts about regenerative design

    Right here

    My work on regenerative design is generously supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Read more about my Fellowship in Regenerative Design.

  • The incredible system that will save us

    Good news. There is an incredible system that can save humanity and will enable us to thrive on planet Earth.

    Here’s how it works. 

    • It is entirely powered by the effect of the sun and the moon.
    • Using simple elements it can establish itself in new locations and in a few iterations it can rapidly scale up, complexifying and adapting to meet its operating conditions. 
    • The system produces no waste at all – all outputs from one process are inputs to others.
    • It creates incomprehensibly complex structures from a small palette of abundant, local materials.
    • The system purifies and circulates water. 
    • It keeps the air in the atmosphere breathable, and maintains levels of greenhouse gases at a level appropriate for system survival.
    • It even screens out harmful rays from the sun.
    • It creates food and nutrients.
    • It even creates abundant construction materials.
    • The system has built-in resilience to enable it to respond to shocks. 
    • It has the capacity to learn and to develop new designs. These designs are optimised to ensure the health of the whole system, not just the individual element within it.

    It is the system of life in the biosphere of planet Earth. If we step back and think about it, there is no system that humans have created that can compete in terms of its resilience, life-giving potential and ability to adapt. 

    This life giving system is out there, it surrounds us, and it is still just about intact. This is good news.

    There is more good news. 

    We, human beings, have been evolved as part of that system, and it is interwoven with us. As I heard fellow Regenerative Design Fellow Michael Pawlyn describe, there are more microbial cells than human cells in our bodies. So there is no meaningful separation between us and this system. 

    And if all parts of the system have evolved to increase the health of the system, then we too have been created by that system to fulfil a role. 

    So, there is this incredible life giving system that we are in extricable part of. So far so good.

    Now some not so good news. Since the Enlightenment, in the Global North we have started to see ourselves as separate from that system. That same school of thought which used reason to take power away from the divine, placed rational ‘man’ at the top of the hierarchy of life. 

    We became separate the system and then we started exploiting it. Initially the system had enough elastic capacity to respond to the damage being rendered by its human population.

    But having become separated from that wider living system ourselves, we no-longer paid attention to the feedback loops that might otherwise have limited our behaviour.

    Enraptured by our our own reason, we lost sight of the incredible power of the capacity of the wider living world to heal us, for it to be important for us, and so we devalue it even more. Dazzled by the spectacle of our own creations, we lose sight of the incredible, overwhelming, delicate, powerful and fragile system that we are part of.

    Now to the really bad news.

    We are like engineers working for a foolish developer who asks us to take bricks out of the foundations to build extra storeys at the top. We have extracted, depleted and destroyed so much of this system that it is about to collapse. Without this life-giving support system, we stand little chance of surviving on this rock in the solar system. 

    And so, what do we do now? Clearly we need to revive the health of our life-support system.

    We can think of our ailing living system on planet Earth as a sick patient displaying multiple symptoms. Without being doctors, we can probably see that if we treat one symptom at a time we may never treat the underlying cause of the disease. Holistic medicine in contrast seeks to consider factors that enable the health of the whole person. Things like diet, sleep, exercise, living environment. Adjusting these factors to increase overall patient health can increase the patient’s ability to respond to illness. Long-term observation of the patient can help work out what factors are having the best effect. 

    This approach recognises the body as a complex system that is not fully knowable and so needs cycles of careful intervention and observation. This approach also recognises that when this system is thriving it is much more resilient and therefore able to respond to shocks and recover. 

    Applying this same logic to the living system on planet earth, if we can enable the conditions within which it can flourish again, then the system can do what it needs to heal. The questions we should be asking are what are the equivalents to diet, sleep, exercise and living environment for our living system on Earth, and what can we do adjust these conditions to bring the system back into a healthy state?

    Creating the conditions for flourishing is an example of intervening higher in the system. Rather than treating the individual elements in the system we are seeking to change the relationships that dictate how the system behaves. 

    But there is one fundamental relationship that we need to change. And that is the one between humans and the rest of the living world. Its decline has led to our almost total separation from the ecosystem that supports us – physically, culturally, psychologicically and in relation to our concept of power. 

    In the analogy above we treated the Earth’s living systems as a patient that we are treating. To change that fundamental relationship between humans and this wider living system, we have to see ourselves as the patient. We are part of that living system. We are inextricably linked to it. When it is healthy, we are healthy. When it is sick, we are sick. 

    So, how can we conclude this news bulletin?

    • We are part of an incredible system. 
    • If we want to heal it we need to treat it holistically. 
    • We need to rediscover our role – not as controllers, not all-seers, but as a unique part of the system that can help the system bounce back and change course where it needs to. 
    • We are new on the planetary scene. We have evolved incredible brain powers, very recently we have seen that, used unwisely, our powers can be hugely destructive, but re-tuned to the system we have evolved in, humans could add terrific resilience to our living world. 
    • If we can create the conditions for the system to thrive, then the system will take care of the rest.
    • And if we help it thrive we will, by dint of being part of that system, be thriving too.

    More blog posts about regenerative design

    Right here

    My work on regenerative design is generously supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Read more about my Fellowship in Regenerative Design.

  • Regenerative design as a response to the systemic challenges we face

    In the construction industry we are focused on tackling anthropogenic carbon emissions. But this focus misses two wider points. 

    Firstly, that the climate crisis is just one of a series of outcomes of wider system collapse. Others include massive species loss, social injustice, health, war. 

    Secondly, that the restoration of our biosphere could tackle all of these crises. A thriving socio-ecological system would sequester carbon at the same time as reducing emissions, would create the conditions for a great return of dwindling species, create the conditions for a more socially just society, in which humans can be healthy and thrive. And in which we are not competing with each other for resources.

    So why don’t we just get on with the mission of restoring habitats ourselves?  

    The problem is that setting ourselves that mission does nothing to change the fundamental relationship between humans and the wider living world. 

    Since the Enlightenment, in the Global North we have come to see the living world as something that we can fully know and control. But what we can now see is that the net outcome of humankind’s intervention in the living world is system degredation. 

    From systems theory, we know that if you want to change the outcome of a system, you need to change the rules and relationships in it. 

    As we witness the collapse of our life-supporting ecosystem as a consequence of our actions, many people are starting to realise that it is our relationship to the living world that is at the heart of the problem. Unless we tackle that, and therefore the actions we take as humans, the system will continue to collapse. 

    Instead of seeing ourselves as controllers of nature – separate to nature, what if we instead saw ourselves as part of a wider living system, and having the unique capacity to unlock the potential of that system. In this framing humans act like a keystone species, one that has a disproportionately positive benefit on its ecosystem – a species that increases the potential of all to thrive around it. 

    It is in this philosophy that regenerative design is framed. Regenerative design seeks to intervene at a socio-ecological system level (in other words, the system that includes people and wider living world) to increase the capacity of that system to survive, thrive and evolve.

    By adopting a regenerative approach, we fundamentally change our relationship to the rest of the system – with the aim of changing overall system behaviour, from one of system collapse to one of system thriving.

    When our socio-ecological system is thriving, carbon is sequestered in soils, plants and oceans, species can recover, our use of resources stays within the renewable limits of the local system, resilience returns to our living system, social injustice by definition disappears and the health of our population improves.

    We don’t have to solve these problems one by one – nor can we. Instead we need to create the conditions within which our socio-ecological system can flourish, and these other benefits will follow.

    Regenerative design provides the lens for seeing how we can intervene in a way that seeks to work with life-giving capacity of living systems, and in doing so, transforming our role from instigators of collapse to a keystone species that unlocks living potential. 

    More blog posts about regenerative design

    Right here

    My work on regenerative design is generously supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Read more about my Fellowship in Regenerative Design.

  • Targets for regenerative design

    Rather than look at a design process and ask ‘is that regenerative’, I find it more insightful to look for where a design process is enabling a living system to thrive and adapt. 

    The advantage of this approach is that it enables us to find regenerative qualities to the design work that we are already doing. (This is an example of looking for the future in the present, one of the techniques in the Three Horizons approach). 

    So for instance, we can look at where an abundant local, natural material is being used as a part of a new structure and we can see that it is enabling of many of the qualities of a thriving living system:

    • Use of abundant renewable materials
    • Feedback – connection between people and the resources they depend upon, building local resilience. 
    • Self-organisation – design that uses local materials better lends itself to local adaptation.
    • Appropriate structure – in this case a smaller scale supply chain that can adapt according to material availability. 

    Design that enables these qualities  of a thriving living system to emerge is regenerative. 

    But what if those renewable elements are only a decorative feature on the front of a brand new building made of virgin, non-renewable materials, then is that design process regenerative?

    Instinctively the regenerative design elements feel massively outweighed by the degenerative design of the superstructure. And there is an emergent risk here that regenerative ‘elements’ will be introduced to a project as a cover up for business-as-norma.

    But getting into assessing how regenerative something is feels like an intellectual trap that misses the point. 

    The goals remain to massively increase the health of the biosphere at the same time as reversing the anthropogenic release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

    The point about regenerative design is that it gives us a means to achieve these aims in a holistic way. 

    The real question is not how regenerative the design process is, but how has the overall process contributed to meeting these global goals.

    That isn’t to say we should celebrate regenerative processes where we see them – we can learn a great deal from what people are already doing, and by sharing these stories we can start to build a regenerative culture that enables more regenerative design in the future.

    More blog posts about regenerative design

    Right here

    My work on regenerative design is generously supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Read more about my Fellowship in Regenerative Design.

    My work on regenerative design is generously supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Read more about my Fellowship in Regenerative Design.

  • Workshop: Planning for learning – IDBE, University of Cambridge

    Workshop: Planning for learning – IDBE, University of Cambridge

    I was in Cambridge today to teach my first of four workshops this academic year on the Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment Masters programme.

    Part of my teaching bookends the course, with a workshop in week on planning for learning and a workshop in the final week on planning for practice. For the rest I feed in models for understanding the design process that students can use in their studio projects. 

    In this first workshop I introduce my Continuous Design diagram as a common framework for talking about design interventions. The Continuous Design diagram emphasises the continuous cycle of observing, intervening, observing, intervening that we need to do when we are making changes in complex systems. 

    We use this diagram to help participants design a learning journey for themselves. It is a good way to think about what your learning goals are, how you could achieve them and how you will know you are on track. 

    I conclude the workshop with an introduction to action learning and I lead participants through the Action Learning Proforma which I developed with Søren Willert a few years ago now.

    Continuous Design diagram

    Continuous Design Diagram by Oliver Broadbent (2021). The diagram shows a loop with four stages: Reflect/brief; Ideas; Make/model; and Test/observe

    This is only the third or fourth time I’ve used the Continuous Design diagram. I see its greatest strength as emphasising the cyclical nature of design, which becomes even more important as we start to think about how to design more regeneratively. 

    This was a particularly lovely day to be teaching in Cambridge. The morning was fresh. I enjoyed having breakfast in the hall at Selwyn College. By lunchtime things had warmed up and I enjoyed sitting for a few minutes by a tributary of the Cam, watching the clear water babble by.

    I am looking forward to returning in December when we will explore what a design brief is in more detail.

  • Caen to Santander

    Caen to Santander

    Today we begin our summer #surfacetravel continental adventure: from Caen in Normandy to Santander in Northern Spain. We are travelling via mixture of bicycle and train.

    The adventure began yesterday with putting our bicycles on the ferry at Portsmouth. As a cycle passenger on a ferry you exist in this weird no persons land between foot passenger and car driver. The cycle route from Portsmouth harbour to the ferry port it’s actually very well signposted. But when you get to the ferry port it is unclear what you are supposed to do. Once we realised though that you’re supposed to line up with the cars, it’s pretty straightforward. And cycling across the open expenses of the ferry terminal and up to the boat feels quite rebellious.

    As a regular readers of this blog will know, I love a ferry ride. Ferries are like floating buildings. A funny mixture of shopping centre, hotel and seagoing vessel. I also love a cafeteria. All of this made for a very enjoyable six hour crossing. I particularly enjoyed trying some handstands in the deck with S.

    Riding with Brittany ferries feels like I’m having a little piece of France pick you up from the UK coast. A two course lunch menu followed by a stiff coffee. The Tour de France on the TV.

    Speaking of which, I was blown away watching the race leader stop to allow his rival to catch up after having fallen on the slopes in the Pyrenees. So often the historical stories of men racing in the tour are about macho rivalries. this feels much more sporting, much more human.

    Looking forward to beginning our own Tour de France.

  • If you want to save the planet… have dancing lessons

    Serendipitously, as I was preparing for my first dance teaching workshop this morning at the Idler Festival, I spotted a quote in one of my other open browser tabs a quote from David Flemming.

    Commons are cooperative enterprises; they therefore depend on trust, on reciprocity, and on social capital. The market economy can get by, for a time, with a gravely-weakened culture and social capital, but the commons cannot. If you really want to save the planet and to give human society a decent chance of living on it, the first thing you should do is to join a choir. Or have dancing lessons, or both. That is not quite the hyperbole it seems: in enduring communities, the thing which defines and distinguishes them is their culture of dance, music, story and tradition—so intertwined with trust that it is hard to tell cause from effect. 

    David Flemming, in ‘Lean Logic – A DICTIONARY for the FUTURE and HOW to SURVIVE IT’

    We always said in the Mudflappers that our mission was to make the world slightly better through the medium of dance. Well here is some compelling philosophical underpinning to back that up. I shared this quote with the dance workshop today and it was well received.

  • A shout out to the dancing crowd at the Idler Festival

    A shout out to the dancing crowd at the Idler Festival

    This post is a message to all the lovely people who joined one my dancing lessons at the Idler Festival. You were such a lovely crowd. I had so many great conversations with people who were just happy to be dancing. And it fills me with joy to get people moving their bodies to music.

    A big thank you to Tom and Victoria for inviting me back. And a big thank you to Ellie Westgarth-Flynn for teaching with me.

    A few of you were asking if I teach anywhere regularly. The short answer is no, but I am looking forward to returning to more festival teaching in the year ahead. If you are based in London, check out Swing Out London for details of classes. If you are based in the West Country, then check out Swing Dance Bristol.

    If you have found your way to this blog then hopefully you will find it to be a joyful mix of engineering, creativity, dance and philosophy, all tools I think we need to build the places we want to live in. So stay tuned, or sign up to my mailing list.

    I’ll post again soon with the playlists from my teaching sessions.

  • Self-learning in systems, hair engineering + Idler Festival Day 1

    Self-learning in systems, hair engineering + Idler Festival Day 1

    A day of two halves: book writing this morning and then swing dance teaching at the Idler festival this evening, with some hair engineering in the middle.

    Enabling systems to self learn

    I have about ten days to finish the first draft of the two chapters I am writing for James and my book on regenerative design for structural engineers. Today I was writing one of 12 principles for thinking about regenerative design. This one is about enabling systems to self-learn, adapt and evolve.

    As ever, with regenerative design, we are thinking about how to enable healthy system qualities to emerge. It is difficult to write about because for one thing we are not talking about directly doing something ourselves, but thinking about how to set the conditions for a certain desirable quality to arise. The second is it doesn’t always feel close to structural engineering. But with our writing, we are not attempting to fully resolve the picture, rather to show what the arguments are and how they might intersect with structural engineering.

    The question I keep coming back to to guide the writing is, how can we move away from seeing the design of buildings as the ends in itself, and instead as the means of creating a society that thrives within ecosystem boundaries.

    In the built environment context, this idea of self-learning in the system could manifest itself as communities being better able to design and adapt their own buildings. And that that process can put them in greater harmony with their supporting ecosystems. The barriers to this process I wrote today were:

    • A design process that starts too late and stops too soon
    • Specialist knowledge not being distributed in the system
    • Lack of local systems knowledge
    • Discomfort with uncertainty
    • The challenge of hearing our nature responds to our plans.

    Tomorrow I will be writing about how design can enable the emergence of a healthy socio-ecological system structure.

    Hair Engineering

    I have a phenomenal amount of hair. When ever I get it cut, it renews at an astonishing rate. You could say it is an abundant natural system. I am impressed with how tall she was able to make it. You could say I have a High Barnet.

    Idler Festival Day One

    For the first time in two years it feels great to be back teaching at a Festival. This time it is back with my friends at the Idler, for their Idler Festival at Fenton House.

    This evening I was second on the bill, teaching a group of about 30 a solo taster Charleston class. On the playlist:

    Around the World (Daft Punk)/I’ve Got That Tune (Chinese Man)/A Cool Cat in Town – Aerophon Mix (Tape Five)/Booty Swing (Parov Stelar)/Lone Digger (Caravan Palace). Link here to playlist.

    Halfway through the class I spotted someone who had been there in the classroom when I had my first swing dancing classes 18 years ago.

    I was happy to see my friend, dancer Constructivist collaborator, Peter Ayres. Looking forward to spending more time together on the Idler lawn over the next two days.

    Three more classes tomorrow.

  • I was looking for a swing dancer but I found an engineer

    On the programme at the Idler Festival, by workshops are simply listed as ‘Dance Teaching with Oliver Broadbent’. One participant came up to me at the end and, after thanking me for the class, said I was looking for you online, but I couldn’t find anything about you, but I did find another Oliver Broadbent who writes about engineering… She was surprised to find we were one and the same.

  • Regenerative Design, Net-Zero Design Error-Free Design and Swing Dancing

    Sometimes when I write on this blog I like to distill my thoughts around one topic. But when there’s lots going on I prefer to write in more of a diary mode, capturing observations, events and the things that are on my mind in case they are useful for when I have a bit more time to do some distillation. For anyone who is a regular reader of this blog you will recognise this as just another way to keep a Kalideascope, gathering the elements from which I can make future creative connections. 

    The big news is that James Norman and I now have a signed contract with the Institution of Structural Engineers to publish our book on regenerative design for structural engineers. We are two-thirds of the way through the first draft and our aim is to get this completed before our respective summer travels. So I have a mid-July writing deadline to hit. But in the meantime there is all of the following going on:

    • Monday I am off to Hazel Hill Wood to prep for the next thing on my list:
    • Tuesday and Wednesday this week I co-leading the second of the three woodland-residential retreats for the Regenerative Design Lab. 
    • Thursday I am teaching a session on advocacy in net-zero design as part of the Net-Zero Structural Design course I run with Will Arnold at the Institution of Structural Engineers. 
    • Thursday I am also teaching a workshop for the Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership’s masters programme, Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment. This will be a reflective session on preparing the soon-to-graduate students for applying their learning in practice.
    • Thursday also (big day!) we have the summer meeting of Hazel Hill Wood’s Trustees. 
    • Friday to Sunday I am teaching Lindyhop and Charleston at the Idler Festival, Fenton House. 

    And finally, Sunday, at around midnight, I am running an online workshop for a construction firm in Australia about avoiding error in construction, part of the GIRI initiative. 

    Somewhere in the middle of all that, I am going to do some book writing. I’ll keep you posted.

  • Customer lift

    Customer lift

    I followed this sign expecting some sort of encouragement or affirmation.

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  • Notes from RESTORE report Sustainability, Restorative to Regenerative

    Here are my notes from reading the RESTORE report ‘ (REthinking Sustainability TOwards a Regenerative Economy) Sustainability, Restorative to Regenerative – edited by Martin Brown and Edeltraud Haselsteiner – as my part of my regenerative design research. Thanks Emma Crichton for the link.

    On regenerative design

    This is probably the most useful part for me.

    ‘Regenerative design, relates to holistic approaches that support the co-evolution of human and natural systems in a partnered relationship.’

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  • Engineering of the commons

    If we want to think really regeneratively about engineering and the creation of buildings, then maybe we should consider building materials as a common resource.

    I realise that I have been approaching the question of regenerative design in engineering from the standpoint of a market-driven economy. Materials are supplied by private suppliers, installed by private companies for a mixture of public and private clients. In most cases the profit (surplus) is reaped far from either the source of the materials or the location of the building.

    But listening to the Frontiers of Commoning podcast I realise that this is only a relatively modern framing of the mechanism by which materials can be sourced, shared and distributed.

    If we want to design buildings regeneratively, then we need to be thinking about how the process of sourcing and manufacturing building materials is regenerative: how the very harvesting of these materials can create more; how these processes can create habitats which enhance other aspects of the ecosystem, building local complexity; how feedback loops are built in so that we know if the system is working within its limits or not.

    If we see our construction materials as a common resource rather than a commodity, we can think much more collectively about how these resources should be manufactured, used, reused, borrowed, repurposed, re-imagined and finally returned to the ecosystem.

    In this framing, no-longer is the engineer is not serving a particular project but the people who share ownership of that common resource. Their role becomes threefold: harvesting of materials from the local bio-mineral region; managing stocks of resources in the most equitable way; and design and re-design of how these materials are used. (Note there is no return of the material to the ground as there is no waste in a regenerative system – just more used for the materials.)

    No-longer would the engineer be working to maximise shareholder value and maximising ecosystem destruction. Instead the engineer would be working to maximise the regenerative harvest of local materials to maximise local flourishing.

  • Exploring regenerative practice for engineers

    As James and I start to delve into the writing for our book on regenerative design for structural engineers, I am gathering my thoughts on what regenerative practice might look for an engineer. This is a working-out-loud post to help develop and share my thoughts.

    The challenge with regenerative design is that we are reaching for something that doesn’t yet exist. But if we wait for the answer to be fully formed, the natural systems that we seek to regenerate – ourselves included – may be destroyed beyond repair.

    And so we have to work with what we’ve got:

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  • Notes on building local

    This month I am writing an article on that explores what if we restricted construction material use to those from a local catchment. Rather than a global supply chain of materials that is disconnected between source and use, what if we could use materials that were a more locally relevant, resilient and regenerative resource?

    Today at the third of James Norman and my sessions exploring regenerative design with Buro Happold in Bath, we heard about the example of the machine shed at Westonburt Arboretum that was built only timber from the site.

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  • Following abundance versus desire

    Following abundance versus desire

    At our local allotments, permaculture teacher Mike Fiengold re-distributes food waste in the community. Even after he has sent food to various local charities there is lots left over, and so he asks if we can take some away. At first I felt it greedy to take more than what I considered to be my fair share. But then I realised it was helpful if we could take as much as possible off his hands. Because if he can clear his stores, he can get more of whatever waste the system is generating and put it into the hands of the people that need it. So now we take more than we need and try to distribute this excess among our neighbours on our street. 

    There’s a few things going on here that I want to note. 

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  • Coming from Bristol, London is a pleasure to cycle through

    After a two-year break I am back on my bike in London. This morning a short hop from Paddington to Kings Cross. Having moved to Bristol almost four years ago the difference I can really appreciate the difference between the two: cycling in London is streets ahead.

    People say to me I wouldn’t want to cycle in London but I think the cycle provision is actually pretty good. I left the station without needing to look at a map*. There were ‘quiet ways’ cycle route signs directing me all the way. Not only did all traffic lights have forward stop boxes for cyclists, cyclists also get their own green light that lets them set off before cars wanting to turn in front of them. And the quiet ways were, well, quiet.

    Of course there are ways that the system could be improved. More cycle and pedestrian-only routes would always be better. But the improvements I have seen are relatively low-cost and easy to implement.
    Bristol has some excellent off-road cycle paths. We chose to live close to one specifically to benefit from the access it provides to the centre of town. But the general permeability of the city to cyclists is poor.

    This is a choice. All it takes is the political way to say we choose not to have a streets choked with cars; we choose to make our streets living, breathing places where people can get around safely and cheaply.

  • Take the meat out of meetings

    Take the meat out of meetings

    Please, take the meat out of meetings. Then you can say, no animal died in the making of this decision.

    Some meetings are pointless. Don’t add to this pointlessness the death of the animal in your sandwich.

    Some meeting reach meaningful outcomes. These are never enhanced by having meat on the table.

    Take the meat out meetings, workshops, seminars and training.

    Image credit: ‘Press Conference on Meat Rationing‘ by Alfred T Palmer of the United States War Office is available in the public domain.

    Too many emails – the Eiffel Over guide
  • Too many emails – the Eiffel Over guide

    Too many emails – the Eiffel Over guide

    I am a connoisseur of email-reduction strategies, so I share this for friends and colleagues of mine who I know are struggling with this at the moment. The best way of dealing with having too many emails is never ‘answer all the emails’. Email overload is a systems problem. It manifests itself as an overflowing inbox but it is rooted in the way the system is set up. Answer all the emails and new ones will appear. We have to fix the system.

    I will start by saying that I still have too many emails. But I don’t feel bad about it because I am trying to work on the system. And some of my system changes have been helpful and I can see are working. This post is not supposed to be a definitive guide but a few things to get you started.

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