Eiffel Over

Tag: interconnection

  • A regenerative framing for supporting local workforce development

    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 organisation then helps to match those aspirations with work opportunities in the local borough. 

    A key question the lab participant is exploring is how providing an operating space for this community activity could help enable and scale this initiative, proven elsewhere, to thrive in their local borough.

    We can  intuitively see the benefits of this approach, but how does this work for more explicitly into a regenerative framing? 

    The Living Systems Blueprint

    In regenerative design, we use the living world itself as a template for understanding how to thrive within ecosystem limits. Instead of extractive, linear systems, we seek to imitate the mechanisms that the living world uses to thrive within its ecosystem limits. 

    The Living Systems Blueprint, which James Norman and I first proposed in the Regenerative Structural Engineer, outlines three key characteristics of thriving, living systems. 

    • Increased interconnection – strengthen the number and quality of connections between elements in the local system
    • Increased symbiosis – creating mutually beneficial exchange that build local system richness
    • Increased capacity to adapt – ensuring the local system can adapt in response to changing environmental conditions. 

    Creating more local symbiosis in the workforce

    Of the three elements of the Living Systems Blueprint, this example relates most closely to creating symbiosis, but it also relates to building interconnection and unlocking capacity to adapt. 

    Living systems create thriving with the resources that are present in the local ecosystem. By resources we mean materials, energy and labour. These resources go round and round, the waste streams from one process being the input to the next. The work of the system creates structures of growing complexity that give the local system increasing richness. 

    This approach is distinct from the alternative: importing materials, energy and labour from other places, and treating processes as linear, creating unlimited consumption and drawdown of resources.

    Building on this principle, the regenerative economy:

    • Works with and seeks to build the latent potential of the local workforce. 
    • Creates local thriving by working with the unique potential and needs of that  place. 
    • Avoids one-size-fits-all solutions that waste resource and a poor fit for the local system’s needs.

    A workforce that is rooted in the local economy and connected to local opportunities:

    • Returns money to the local community – but also builds relationships of trust (symbiosis)
    • Strengthens people’s connection to their local place and each other (interconnection)
    • Builds the local capability to maintain, repair and modify our build environment (capacity to adapt)

    The role of the regenerative designer

    One of the key roles of the regenerative designer is to connect together and enable the growth of positive initiatives that create thriving. Regenerative design isn’t necessarily about imposing solutions – rather it about seeking out and amplifying what is emergent in the system.

    In this case, creating operating space for Purpose Xchange to work from could be a key step in unlocking this change. Sometimes, the barriers to initiatives that build local thriving are not about potential or demand, but lie in being able to join up the pieces. This could be one of the most important roles for the regenerative designer.

  • Where we make but also where we take

    This post has moved.
    It now lives on the Constructivist blog: read the updated version →

    Eiffel Over is now my stage for engineering-related clowning, singing, dancing and writing — you’ll find my professional writing on design and regenerative thinking over at Constructivist.

    This has become one of my catchphrases in regenerative design*. To think of design as being for ‘where we make but also where we take’. The role of the regenerative designer is to create a transition to an industry in which our designs create human and ecological thriving. 

    To make that possible we need to bring two separate things into our view at the same time. The place where we are doing the making, and the places that are we are drawing upon to do that making.

    Because if our work makes the world better where we are making, but worse where we are taking, we are not creating thriving. We are just shifting it from one place to the other.

    *It definitely is a catchphrase – I’ve already written a post this year with this exact same title.

  • Remote treehouse design

    Sometimes humour serves best to highlight the ridiculousness of a situation. 

    In my last few posts I’ve been exploring the relationship between designers and the ecosystem they draw their materials from. 

    The working thought experiment has been a game in which differently sized design teams compete to build a wooden shelter from fallen branches in a forest. The size and configuration of the team have a big impact on how the teams source and work with their materials. 

    Now, let’s make it ridiculous. Imagine that instead of the design teams being situated on site in the wood, they are instead situated in a cabin just outside the forest. The construction teams remain on site. How would the game work?

    The direct link between designers, the site, the construction team and the environment that the materials come from is broken.

    The first challenge is communicating to the designers what the site is like. This could be done by means of a drawing, or even a video sent to the designers. But any representation is likely to be a partial version of fully understanding the site. 

    Next we need to find a way to communicate to the designers what materials are available. In the game, the materials are sourced from the surrounding woodland. But found materials don’t necessarily conform to easily describable units. We could envisage then a system in which branches are harvested and sawn to make their dimensions easier to work with and specify. In doing so, we lose some of the material in order to ease communication and specification for the remote design team.

    With a list of standard parts the remote design team can then begin their design. They may invite the build team in to the design office for ‘early contractor involvement’. When the designs are produced, there will need to be further meetings to brief the construction team on how the design works.

    As construction begins, the people on site notice the design could better fit into the local environment with some changes, but that would take additional meetings with the design team over in the cabin. And it’s not their own design anyway. They don’t feel like they own it, so they don’t bother.

    Meanwhile, the design team forget that they are in a game and start selling their remote treehouse design services to other people. They have a design that they believe works, and so start using it in other woodlands, albeit with even less knowledge of the locally available materials, site conditions, and fitness-for-purpose of their design.

    Of course, this is a ridiculous way to organise a construction process.

  • Losing edge (on the disadvantages of scale)

    In my last few posts I’ve been exploring the relationship between the scale of design team and the connection with the places they are working with. Today I’ll go into the benefits of smaller scale.

    To explore this topic I’ve invented a game as a thought experiment. In this game, teams of different sizes compete in a woodland to build shelters from materials they have foraged. To form their working groups, the participants of each team form into tight clusters. The catch is that only people on the outside of the cluster – the ones on the edge – can do the foraging. 

    Yesterday, I explored the advantages that larger groups have, and in particular the possibility of specialisation that a larger team allows. But this specialisation comes with costs. A big one is the loss of contact with the surrounding ecosystem. 

    In a smaller team, everyone is involved with foraging, designing and building. This interconnectedness means that the processes can inform each other. The process of foraging informs what materials are available for design and construction. Design itself might be a process of trial and error with the available materials. And the experience of construction can inform what materials the foragers need to look for next. 

    The smaller scale also enables the design process to adapt to environmental conditions. If, for example, a particular material is running out in the environment, the foragers can get something different, and adapt the design. Over time, there is even the possibility that the foragers could notice the impact of harvesting materials on the ecosystem. It could be, for example, that harvesting a certain kind of timber encourages regrowth of other species. 

    This constant, direct feedback loop is much easier to achieve in smaller teams—teams with more “edge,” or more points of contact with the environment.

    In larger teams, this kind of information can still be shared, but because specialist designers aren’t directly in contact with the environment, a formal process for transmitting information must be established. This introduces a risk: if designers don’t experience the environment firsthand, they may become desensitised to the information. Seeing and feeling the conditions on the ground creates a deeper understanding than hearing about them secondhand.

    While this is a post about building wooden shelters, it is a metaphor for our actual large-scale design processes, in which designers have virtually no contact with the environment that they are affecting by their design decisions. Without edge – without strong connection with our ecosystems – it is much harder to work in harmony with those systems. 

  • Stuffed crust geometry

    At some point in my childhood, Pizza Hut introduced the stuffed crust pizza. The idea was simple: stuff the crust with a ring of gooey cheese. It was fine when you had a slice from a large pizza, but on a small pizza, the balance was off—too much crust and not enough topping.

    I haven’t thought about stuffed crust pizzas in decades, but they help illustrate an important point in geometry. As a pizza gets bigger, the ratio of crust to surface area gets smaller. So a small pizza has lots of crust, while a large pizza has relatively less crust per unit of topping.

    In general, this is expressed as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its area, which decreases as the radius grows. A small circle has far more edge per unit area than a large one. This is why my small stuffed crust pizza tasted too crusty.

    But this post isn’t just about childhood pizza or geometry. It’s about the importance of edges in systems. How much “edge” we have shapes how we interact with the wider environment and how systems function internally. It affects the design of buildings, cities, and infrastructure. 

    But that’s more than I can stuff into this post—more tomorrow.

  • Seeing the latent potential

    This post has moved.
    It now lives on the Constructivist blog: read the updated version →

    Eiffel Over is now my stage for engineering-related clowning, singing, dancing and writing — you’ll find my professional writing on design and regenerative thinking over at Constructivist.

    As Rob Hopkins points out in his wonderful book From What Is to What If, the climate crisis is, at its core, a crisis of the imagination. If we can’t envision a thriving world, we won’t be able to create it.

    A key skill in regenerative design is cultivating the conditions that allow us to imagine this thriving future.

    This requires us to not only see what exists but also to imagine what could be. For example, looking at an empty park and envisioning it full of people running (as highlighted in yesterday’s post), or standing on a traffic-filled street and picturing it so quiet that birdsong fills the air and people stop to chat.

    In these cases, the elements are already present—they are latent. But to unlock this latent potential, we must recognise both the desertified present and the abundant possibilities. Only then can we begin to design the next step toward that vision.

    Equipping ourselves for this imaginative work is, I believe, a critical part of becoming a regenerative designer.

    Hopkins, R., 2019. From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT.

  • From no run to park run

    A few days ago, Parkrun turned 20 years old. What started as a simple community gathering, launched by Paul Sinton-Hewitt on October 2nd, 2004, has grown into a global sports phenomenon with over 7 million registered participants. It began as a way for people to come together and socialise, and it’s evolved into so much more.

    I’m an occasional Parkrunner myself, showing up every now and then to run the 5km loop at my local park. And I often wonder: what would all these people have been doing otherwise? Twenty years ago, at 9am on a Saturday, this park might’ve had a handful of runners. Today, hundreds gather to run.

    To me, Parkrun is a story of what happens when something unlocks the potential in a system, creating abundance where there was once scarcity. Where there were only a few runners, now there are many. Where people might have spent their Saturday mornings passively at home, now they’re out in the fresh air, moving, connecting, and engaging with their community.

    What’s remarkable about Parkrun is that it’s powered by volunteers—ordinary people who freely give their time to make these events possible. This time and energy were always there, untapped, waiting for an outlet. Parkrun created that structure, unlocking this latent resource.

    In many ways, this is the essence of regenerative design: seeing potential abundance in situations that seem scarce. Parkrun didn’t introduce new people or new resources into these communities; it simply provided a framework that allowed people to organize and engage. The potential was always there—it just needed to be brought to life.

  • 340-degree vision

    I read on a fact sheet that guinea pigs have 340-degree vision. On a horizontal plane they can see almost all around. Imagine! Their only blind spots are directly behind and a small patch directly in front of them. 

    That’s because they are prey animals. They spend their whole waking time observing their environment for threats (they can even sleep with their eyes open). And while they can’t see far, they build up a detailed mental map of their surroundings by scuttling around, which means they can navigate even in the dark.

    The animals that hunt them, on the other hand, have forward-facing eyes. Their breadth of vision is limited but their acuity is much higher. This focus allows them to spot and lock on to their prey from much further away.

    I note that my eyes are on the front of my head. Does that make me a hunter? 

    And when we design, which way are our eyes pointing? Are we focused on a pre-defined target or are we continually scanning the landscape to build up a picture?

    For the regenerative designer, seeing is much more akin to the latter: building up a picture of the system we are in by continually exploring it. Building our interconnection with place. Searching for symbiosis we can unlock. Looking for emergent patterns we can enable. Then we can know how to act, even without being able to see straight forward.

  • How much does your website weigh?

    It’s a funny question. How much does my website weigh? Is it heavy? It is light? I have no way of knowing. 

    But I like the question, because it is a good proxy for the energy impact of my website. What is its footprint? What is the energy used in keeping the servers whirring in the cloud (which is not in fact fluffy and is in fact a warehouse). 

    And the reason we don’t know the answer to the questions is that there is no feedback loop. When I write a post and add some data-heavy images I don’t feel that extra load. 

    (more…)