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 few books each year, but it also means those ones I do read I know really well. This is great when you want to be able to recall a concept while standing in front of a workshop, but it is not so good for reading new content. The pile of books I now want to read is now far greater than I’ll ever get through. The smartest stuff I’ve read about productivity tells me that doing things quicker is a fool’s game. So maybe I need a different aproach.
Blog
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The Lighthouse: film review + engineering notes
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 – black and white and square, with high-contrast shots of machinary and bleak landscapes. And there is a haunting, almost mechanical soundtrack, which recalls for me Johnny Greenwood’s soundtrack for There Will Be Blood.
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The satisfaction of learning what the buttons can do
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 oven, a sports watch or a computer, have many more functions than we realise. Not all of these devices have the levels of user interface design that you might get from say a modern phone. While I’m a fan of good user design, I quite enjoy pouring through manuals to discover these more obscure functions… or better still, trying to discover them for myself.
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#15 Show-notes – Oliver Broadbent interview by Alexie Sommer – Creativity, climate and clowning
I spend most of my time designing creativity training for engineers. In this episode we flip the format. Alexie Sommer, Independent Design and Communication Director and collaborator on many of my projects interviews me about why I set up Eiffel Over and Constructivist Ltd, and what our plans are for designing creativity training for engineers in 2020. We get into:
- Techniques for teaching creativity
- Our programme of training support people tackling the climate emergency
- And what engineers might learn from clowns.
Listen on Apple Podcasts , Sticher or by download here
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From self-help to help me.
Readers of this blog will know I started a project a couple of years ago to write a book called ‘Analogue Skills‘, a re-examination of the pre-screen skills that relied on to get through the day. I’ve always intended it to be part philosophical, part self-help. When I’ve stalled in my writing, one of the barriers has been not knowing how much of an authoritative voice to take. There is a well-troden self-help author path in which the writer spends a period of time – usually at least six months, sometimes a decade of a career – living the chosen lifestyle, and then writing about it. But that doesn’t sit well with me. I feel the Analogue Skills project to be much more of an experiment.
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Clash of the sign writers
Spotted in Swindon. I don’t understand how this sort of thing happens -
If you go down to the woods today
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 than anyone can remember. Water is reanimating forgotten courses that we hadn’t even noticed existed.
Today was my first day in post as the Deputy Chair of Hazel Hill Trust, the charity set up by Alan Heeks to run the wood and to provide a place where people can learn about wellbeing, resilience and sustainability.
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In praise of Aix-en-Provence TGV
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 section of the high-speed line from Paris to Marseilles. The original line built in the 1970s went as far as Lyon. In the 1990s, as part of President Mitterand’s ‘grand projets’ the line way extended to the Marseille.
The extension feels like an unapologeticly bold statement of the importance of high-speed rail. All the stations and many of the bridges have a monumental quality to them. No doubt the line was built with huge controversy – it seems to pay little reverence to the villages and countrysides it blasts through other than to say this is a piece of national infrastructure to be proud of.
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From Dminor to F#minor – new adventues in chord transitions
My Dad and I talk about chords. How would you get from one key in a piece of music to another? To onlookers, it might seem as though we are playing a game of Mornington Crescent. But it makes sense to us.
This evening I put on the second movement of Ravel’s String Quartet in F, which I love. It’s a plucky effervesecent number, with a soaring, bowed second phrase in a completely different key. I sat down at the piano to work it out. The first section is in D minor, and the second part is in F# minor. The common note that allows the connection is A. But in all my years hammering things out on the piano I have never noticed this as a possible transition, in any key.
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Memories of seven – a diary for my daughter
My daughter is now seven. I have been trying to remember what being seven was like for me. Memories start to become more frequent around this time. Some major changes were going on for me around then, moving house, moving school, parents divorcing. Until recently I would have said I could clearly remember when and in what order these big events in my childhood happened. But when I tried to write these down, it seems my hard drive is more fragmented than I had realised.
So I started to recreate my picture of seven on a piece of paper, and in conversation with family, started to fill in the gaps. This is what I’ve managed to piece together.
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Olafur Eliasson at the Tate + reflections on my own work
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 moment, and I am not satisfied that I am being able to draw a cohesive thread between them. I think this is important because I subscribe to the idea that to have impact on your work, you need to be regularly adding to it in a disciplined way – always adding momentum to the fly-wheel, as Jim Collins puts it.
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Why do they say ‘sixty-ten’ in French?
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 until we got to sixty-nine. And then I explained that French for seventy is soixante-dix, literally, ‘sixty ten’. Without turning round, I could feel the look of bewilderment on her face.
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Keynote: How problem-based learning can save the world and make you happy too.
In November 2019 I was booked to deliver the keynote address for the University of Edinburgh Engineering Faculty’s away day. It was an opportunity to explore how the climate and ecological emergencies are an invitation to delve into:
- The scale of the challenge to traditional university teaching
- The nature of the challenge and how we need a different approach
- How to use a problem-based learning approach
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On traffic
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. -
Performance versus reflection
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 their learning. The answer could be to think about performance.
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The end of trying harder and being nicer
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, I am picking up a sense of deep frustration, which seems to come in two flavours.
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Creative Surplus
Creative surplus is the time we have to invest in thinking creatively, just like a financial surplus allows us to make financial investments. I like the term because it implies both that it is a quantity that you have to create and it is something that you can invest for greater benefit later.
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A reminder about the imminent climate catastrophe and how we should educate engineers to prepare for it
[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 save the world and make you happy too’. But I have renamed it ‘A reminder about the imminent climate catastrophe and how we should educate engineers to prepare for it’]
Tonight’s engagement is my first since I took a summer sabbatical, which I planned to use to work on a book. Those plans changed in my first week away when I got involved in the Extinction Rebellion summer uprising in Bristol. That experience of direct action and the reaction it caused prompted me to read much more about climate breakdown, models for political change, the implications of societal collapse, the role of engineers to help minimise impacts and deal with upheaval in our own communities and the role of the people that teach engineers.
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Bubble surface
This afternoon I headed to We The Curious with my daughter for a summer holiday treat. The highlight was the giant sheet of bubble you can make there by dragging a sort of rollerblind contraption through a soapy solution. The result is a vertical bubble surface that flows and swirls with irridescant eddies. When you blow at the surface is distorts out of plane, like a bullesye from a spun pane of glass, or a portal to another dimension.
And then without warning, ping, it disappears without a trace.
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Parenting x inspecting hydraulic structures in the Frome Valley
[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 my daughter at her pace, stop and look at various bits of engineering infrastructure along the way, and then move on when we are ready.
This weekend’s excursion was along the Frome Valley in East Bristol. Near where we live the river cuts a steep gorge through the limestone landscape that forms a lush green necklace that weaves its way through our neighbourhood. It is an excellent off-road route for cycling.
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Notes from leaving my phone at home
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, I have to seek out the time, usually on the clocks above buildings, on church towers, behind the counter in cafes. My favourite is when you can’t see the time but you can hear it. Two nights ago I slept out under the starts without a phone or watch – my clock was the peel of bells in the nearby village; my alarm the dawn.
Failing architectural time pieces, I have become adept at spotting the time on the screens of people adjacent to me. Sometimes I have to crane my neck.
I look at the map before I leave the house, and try to identify landmarks that will help guide me on my way. I make use of maps I find in the street, and I find I am more conscious of where to find these. Sometimes I ask the way. Usually I figure it out. Before long my own mental map starts to form.
I see things that make me think of friends and family and times together. I notice how often I want to reach for my phone and share that thought there and then with the subject concerned. I try instead to sit and savour the warm feeling of the association – and just live it without taking any action. I sometimes write a note about the moment in my diary and tell myself to save it for when I next see the person concerned.
A notebook is the friend of the phone-free flaneur. Use it to:
- Do a quick sketch map to help you find your way.
- Write down your itinerary, including confirmation numbers and train times.
- Note any things you would like to tell your friends about next time you see them.
- Tear out pages and use them to send a message to someone you are thinking of.
- Draw a sketch of the view from the top of a mountain (you may be rubbish at drawing, but photos taken from mountaintops are always disappointing, so what have you got to lose?)
- Slide a debit card in the back cover of your notebook and its like you’ve got Apple Pay.
Without distractions, I can hold onto and let ideas mature more fully in my mind. Once they have taken shape I can write those down in the diary too. But with my phone in my pocket, a message can arrive out-of-the-blue and my clarity of thought is gone.
All it takes is for me to receive a message about something or other for my emotional state to change in a flash. I wish my brain could stay more firmly attached to the hear-and-now but it quickly focuses its attention on the new stimulus, and my emotions are hijacked. Of course, I want to be helpful and see to whatever matter is arising, but there may be a better time for it than when I am walking down the street – and I might respond better when I am in a more appropriate place. Without my phone, I feel I keep on a much more even emotional keel.
And, I’m reading more.
So, give it a go. Leave your phone at home, and see what happens. Let me know how you get on (tell me when you get home).
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Climate breakdown – uncivil engineering questions
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 and a facilitator to Extinction Rebellion (XR). In June, I joined the team that run induction sessions for new members of XR Bristol. The following words I’ve adapted from the script we use as the basis for the induction sessions.
‘The Government has an obligation to provide protection for the citizens it represents. This is the basis of the social contract upon which the citizens give the government the power to rule.
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Appreciating concrete in Marseille
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 the city with my father who is undergoing cancer treatment in various branches of the city’s healthcare system and appreciating the architectural tour I’m getting.
In the centre of town these blocks remind me of bookcases: two monolithic, slick sides between which span the concrete shelves, on which sit the apartments like colourful books. It’s fascinating to see the different ways that windows, balconies and staircases are articulated in these concrete buildings. I point out towering souring fin walls, beautifully articulated fire escapes, and how paint is used to express the different elements of the concrete structures.
The rocky hills that rise up behind Marseille keep the city hemmed in by the sea. Standing on the high ground platform of Notre Dame de la Gard in the middle of town, you can see clusters of distant tower blocks that seem to bravely climb the distant slopes of the edge of the city, like pilgrims. I’m used to seeing tower blocks standing imposingly against the flat, grey London sky, but here these structures are rendered tiny by the massive hills behind them.
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Transformative infrastructure goes both ways
Marseille
In my previous post I was talking about the experience of distance, and how, when understood as an experience, distance is no longer a fixed entity.
That post was triggered by some lines from Proust in which the narrator is talking about how his perception of local distances alters when he switches from rail transport to motorcar. Some further thoughts on this topic.
I recall how the distances between various destinations, and therefore the shape of the city itself, appeared to change when the London Overground, an orbital railway in the inner suburbs, opened. All of a sudden areas of the city that seemed far away felt much closer: South-East London, previously impossibly far, was now a nearby neighbourhood to where I lived in the North-East.
Such a step-change in the experience of city living demonstrates the transformative power of civil engineering infrastructure. Linking, drawing together, connecting – this is what engineers have been doing for centuries.
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The experience of distance
Marseille
A morning walk up the steep hill to the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Gard granted me panoramic views of the city of Marseille and the sea. I love the peaceful hum that can be extracted from high up of a limbering up for a day of activity.I underlined these words yesterday in ‘In Search of Lost Time’. The narrator is talking about how his perception of distance was changed when, instead of travelling by rail, he starts to go by car.
(more…)‘We express the difficulty we have in getting to a place in a system of leagues and kilometres, which becomes false the moment that difficulty decreases. The art of distance, too, is modified, since a village that had seemed to be in a different world from some other village, becomes its neighbour in a landscape whose dimensions have altered.’
Proust, M. (1921). In Search of Lost Time, Vol 4. Sodom and Gomorrah. (C. Prendergast, Ed.) (Penguin Cl). Penguin Books. -
#14 Show-notes – Sophie Thomas – Circular Design
Sophie is an unusual mix of campaigner, practising designer and Chartered Waste Manager. She’s been working in the fields of sustainable design, behaviour change and material process for nearly 20 years. I invited Sophie on to the show to talk about waste and circular design. In our conversation we get into:
- The engineering of linear and circular products, material selection, recycling houses and oil rigs.
- Creative strategies for circular designers, and in particular the idea that waste is a design flaw.
- And the practical philosophy of someone who has spent so long think about waste.
Listen on Apple Podcasts , Sticher or by download here
Related podcasts and posts
If you enjoyed this episode then check out this written interview I did with Sophie two years ago as part of a Royal Academy of Engineering-funded project we did at Think Up into the strategies of different sorts of designer.
For more strategies on creative thinking, read my article ‘How to have ideas – strategies for engineers and other humans‘.
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#13 Show-notes – Forth Bridge – An Engineering Detour
An engineering detour is something engineers do when they go out of their way, usually on holiday, to go and check out a piece of engineering infrastructure. In this episode I take an engineering detour to the mighty Forth Rail bridge. Along the we get into the engineering of the structure, how taking detours can build our creative skills, and on a philosophical note I weigh up facts and figures versus experiential knowledge. Join me for the ride.
Listen on Apple Podcasts , Sticher or by download here.
Related Eiffel Over episodes and posts
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Microadventure #1: Garden Sleeping
For my birthday this week my partner Mary gave me Alistair Humphreys’s inspirational book ‘Microadventures’. According to Humphreys, a microadventure is an adventure that is short, simple, local, cheap – yet still fun, exciting, challenging, refreshing and rewarding. Last night I undertook my first mission – to go and sleep under the stars in the garden. As adventures go this reads as really not very challenging at all, but I was surprised by how unorthodox it felt.
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Superpowers for Creative Design – University of Bath
I’m on the road again, this time to the University of Bath where I have the pleasure of running a workshop with first-year students on creative thinking in support of their structural design projects. I’m using the Superpowers for Creative design resource I shared earlier this month – now updated, thanks to the help of my colleague Alexie Sommer, to be in the form of a fold-out zine. The image above is a teaser for what to expect!
I’ll posting a downloadable version of this resource soon.
Lesson notes to follow.
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Superpowers for Creative Design
Superpowers for Creative Design is the name I gave to a one-page summary of my undergraduate creativity teaching at Imperial College. This is my first draft. I like the idea of creativity being a superpower. I am sure that people who can channel their creative thinking will have a great advantage in the future.
The diagram brings together material from other posts on this site. I describe the Kalideascope concept in ‘How to have ideas – guidance for engineers and other humans‘. And I wrote about the concept of a creative system in ‘9 Ways to Build Creativity in your Organisation‘.
Drawing this diagram I found a nice interrelationship between all this material. To have ideas we need to draw upon information. That information comes from the things we see, the books we read, the website we look at. But critically it also comes from talking to others. How we interact with one another has a big impact on the quality of thought exchange. With the right interaction, ideas can sparked off of one-another and can be transmitted to others, and form the basis of their ideas.
Underlying it all is behaviours, and within that self-discipline. Mastering that self-discpline is a great strength – a superpower!