Category: Blog (the archive of everything)Page 1 of 12

A suboptimal walk in the woods

Here’s a made-up story I usually tell in our How to Have Ideas workshops at Constructivist. It is a story from the distant past when humans lived without…

Convergent poem

Zero in Figure out Tidy up Manage down Validate Mitigate Prioritise Optimise Strip it back Keep it clear Make the risks  All disappear. These all sound like good…

Observe | Brief | Ideas | Test | Repeat

This week I’ve been making the case for a continuous, place-based approach to design. As James Norman and I set out in the Regenerative Structural Engineer, we see…

What is Continuous Place-Based Design?

Continuous Place-Based Design is distinct from its opposite — Short-Term Design from Anywhere (see yesterday’s post). The following is an extract from a new entry I wrote today…

Introducing Short-Term Design from Anywhere

Today I’ve been imagining what a design process might look like if its goal was the opposite of enabling humans and the living world to survive, thrive, and…

Full Circle

Here’s a simple experiment. Take a wine glass and place it on a city map. With a pencil, draw around the base. Follow the circle as closely as…

What you only notice when everything quietens down

This is my final post for the year. Some things we notice because we are looking for them. I have lost my keys; I look around the house,…

Exploring the Brief with IDBE at Cambridge

Four times a year, I have the pleasure of heading up to Cambridge to teach on the Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment (IDBE) course. It’s always a…

Human beings or human doings

It is easy to look back on the year and list what you have done – projects started and milestones met, things ticked off. It is much harder…

Through and through

Any domain of knowledge is a treasure trove of jargon. When that knowledge relates to a traditional craft, it becomes a vocabulary deeply rooted in working with the…

Make hay while the wind blows

Make hay while the wind blows. Riffing on yesterday’s theme of power, a few weeks ago as storm winds tore across the UK, I was kept awake by…

Watt to do?

At my latitude in Bristol, there are about 12 fewer hours of sunlight at the winter solstice compared to the summer. That’s half a day’s less light. What’s…

Better than a New Year’s resolution

I used to like making New Year’s resolutions. My resolution to stop eating chocolate digestives in my old job at Expedition Engineering lasted 3.5 years. My resolution to…

Juice the System: a strategy for exploring complex systems

Last week, I wrote about an idea-generation strategy I regularly use in teaching called Juice the Brief. This week, I’ve been working on an analogous method called Juice…

Tagging along

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about doing more with the tags on this blog.  Tags are the keywords that I assign to every post on this blog….

Don’t interrupt

I need to get that invoice out. What was I thinking about? Should I order another coffee? There’s so much to do before Christmas. Is the role of…

What shall we do a with a no-brief client?

(To the tune of “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor”) Chorus: What shall we do with a no-brief client? What shall we do with a no-brief…

Make a little time for design

Things are just a bit too busy right now. I don’t really have much time to think about my design process. Or so it goes. But here’s the…

120 Satsumas at the dentist’s

Nobody relishes the prospect of a dull meeting, which is why, as a facilitator and trainer, I always try to bring an element of play into my workshops….

Losing at Tetris (and planning)

If you’ve ever played the computer game Tetris, you’ll know how it goes: things are fine at first. Blocks drop at a manageable pace, and you can take…

Slow-growing ideas

Some ideas are an instant hit. Some don’t stick at all. And some—ones you thought hadn’t stuck—are simply taking a long time to grow. Today, I’m running training…

Juice the brief

Juice the Brief is one of my favourite techniques for uncovering the possibilities hidden in a design brief. It’s a simple yet powerful way to stimulate creativity, generate…

Imagining the wood from the trees

This week, I’ve been writing about observation as the starting point for regenerative design. Today, I’ve been working with colleagues at Hazel Hill Wood to envision a year-long…

Begin design with observation (Part 2)

Yesterday, I wrote about how starting design with observation allows us to take a broader, more holistic view of the systems we’re working within. Another reason to start…

Begin design with observation (part 1)

We often think of design as starting with a design brief—a set of requirements outlining what we want. But when seen through a regenerative lens, design begins differently….

Re-inventing the wheel(ie bin)

Yesterday, I wrote about improving how we manage poo at Hazel Hill. One particular challenge our staff face is dealing with three of our most “productive” toilets. These…

Story of poo

Some context. When people started visiting Hazel Hill Wood for respite and educational weekends in the early 1990s, there were no buildings. I believe the first structure to…

Free body conflict/a vector joke

A final thought on conflict. This time, how the different modes of conflict (competition, accommodation, avoidance and collaboration) can be thought of as free-body collisions. Avoidance – the…

Clunch

You read that right. No it is not an abbreviation of pack lunch. Clunch is a type of limestone, and one of the wonderful pieces of vocabulary I…

Conflict and collaboration

The fourth mode of conflict is collaboration. In this mode we are interested in the other person but also keen to assert our own view. I want you…