Category: EngineeringPage 1 of 3
I am speaking to more and more people who are disillusioned with their work. Often what is in the balance is a purpose-led career versus job security and…
If you are interested in understanding how your organisation should perform in the climate emergency then you should be interested in organisational culture. An emergency is a state…
In March 2020 we were all sent home and we discovered we could meet using video conferencing instead. Suddenly our wide-angled world was sliced to a quarter of…
This course, which I deliver at Constructivist for the Institution of Structural Engineers is my longest running conceptual design training course. It is an introductory course, which splits…
A year on from declarations of climate emergency in the construction industry I am looking for ways to carry on emphasising the scale of the problem and the…
It feels right as I take on my new role at Hazel Hill Wood to read the Hidden Life of Trees. This is an evolving post based on…
This week I ran a workshop with undergraduate students at Imperial College working in design teams at imperial. the aim was to show that it is much easier…
There used to be a sign outside a bakery in London that said something along the lines of, ‘it’s the invisible ingredients – love, care and attention –…
It is tempting to think of a design brief as wholly reliable, a document that contains all the information necessary to execute the design. But design briefs are…
When developing a design brief, it is tempting to start by constraining the problem – by clarifying, by simplifying, by cutting out. But if we want to make…
I’ve been listening the BBC World Service’s podcast ’13 Minutes to the Moon’ about the Apollo space programme. Last night I listened to the episode about Apollo 8,…
It’s hard to know where to start. So much has changed in the last fortnight and there is so much that I feel compelled to write about. But…
Tabitha Pope is an architect and lecturer, with a specialism temporary structures and participatory architecture and a passion for work that sits at the boundary of art and…
Bengt is a consultant and ‘re-designer’, working in sustainability and circular design in the built environment. This year we are working together to create training in response to…
I met with a friend earlier in the week to talk about setting some life goals. It’s a conversation we had had five years ago and then did…
I’m a slow reader. The problem is I can’t seem to retain things unless I write them down or sketch them out. It means that I read very…
I just went to see The Lighthouse, an enjoyably gothic story of the descent into madness of two lighthouse keepers. I loved the visual design of this film…
I am reminded this morning of much I like working out what all the buttons do on a machine. Quite often the machines we use, be they an…
It will probably be very muddy. At least it was for my first visit of the year to Hazel Hill Woods. Recent rain has made the forest wetter…
I am speeding north on a train from Aix-en-Provence TGV and reflecting on what it is I like so much about this station. It sits on the southern…
This week I have had the feeling that I have been struggling recently to find focus on my creative work. I have lots of projects on at the…
This question came up on the way home this evening. On the back of the tandem, my daughter was experimenting with counting in French. Things were going fine…
Drivers, please don’t complain about the traffic: you are the traffic Broadbent, O. (2019). Internal monologue everytime I hear a driver complain about the traffic. Bristol.
A key part of problem-based learning is reflection. But how do you get people not interested in reflection to start thinking critically about the decisions they take over…
Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking to engineers about they can do in response to the climate emergency. For those that are engaged with the topic,…
[The following text is adapted from the after-dinner speech I gave at the University of Edinburgh Engineering Faculty’s away day. It was originally titled ‘How problem-based learning can…
[Written in May, posted today] Saturday was the chance for my one of my favourite kinds of parenting: the kind where I can go on a journey with…
I’ve started experimenting with leaving the house without my phone. On purpose. Here are some things I’ve noticed. I need to get a watch. Without a watch, however,…
At the start of the summer I felt that the best contribution I could make to tackling the climate emergency was to offer my skills as a trainer…
One of the thing things that I like about Marseille is the quality of the concrete tower block design. I’ve been riding in taxis back and forth across…