Category: The daily blog – For Engineers (and Other Humans)Page 1 of 4
My daily blog on creativity, regenerative design and practical philosophy drawn from across my teaching, writing and collaborations. Sign up for my weekly digest by clicking here and choosing the appropriate button.
My thanks to Jen Ford of Factory X for this analogy. Regular design is like thinking to yourself, “what do I want for dinner?” then going to buy…
I’ve been writing this week about when is and isn’t a good time to optimise. And also about the way a street theatre clown uses feedback to keep…
In street theatre, the clown lives for the audience. I’m not talking here about the stereotype of the kids’ entertainment performer, but of the much older sort of…
It is easy to do something the same way we did it before. The previous time acts as a guide. Using the same approach as last time gives…
Everything is in flow. Rivers and streams. The air blowing our heads and tall buildings. Information. Pedestrians and traffic. Materials, from mine, to factory, to building, to disassembly…
Here’s a facilitation structure (straight from our How to Run a Great Workshop Workshop playbook) that I’ve used in a wide range of contexts, from a global Zoom…
One of the participants in the Regenerative Design Lab is exploring working with The Purpose Xchange, who work directly with individuals to uncover their dreams and aspirations. The…
The question came up at a recent roundtable: how do we inspire designers to act regeneratively. And I said, train to be a plumber. But instead of plumber…
Warning signs interest me. In some instances warning signs are necessary and appropriate, but in my experience they are often the mitigation measure of last resort for an…
The Forest Ark is our most distinctive building at Hazel Hill Wood. It was designed in 2008 to showcase high-tech, off-grid living. Within its curving, organic form, rainwater…
Two days ago we had the Convergent Poem, full of ways of working that engineers (and other humans) tend to get praise for. Here is its awkward sibling,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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. Riffing on yesterday’s theme of power, a few weeks ago as storm winds tore across the UK, I was kept awake by…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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…
(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…
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…