Eiffel Over

Tag: observation

  • Cooking with what’s in the cupboard

    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 the ingredients from the supermarket. Circular design is more like seeing what’s in the cupboard and thinking creatively about what you can make.

    This shift in approach represents a different relationship with our cooking supply chain. The goals might still be the same: to eat something; to care for someone through providing them with food; maybe to eat healthily; possibly to spend time with family or friends around a meal. But the starting point is different: not what do I want but what do I have to work with.

    I was writing earlier this week about how an improv clown in a theatre works with the audience. They have to work with what is there – they can’t decide in advance how they want the world to be. But they can work with the audience dynamics to create something entertaining with the emotions the clown is able to generate.

    More generally, when we work with what is already present in the system, we have the potential to create a much lower energy solution. If we are working with a material that the system already produces: eg an existing waste stream or renewable resource, then we can create much tighter feedback loops that balance our choices against what’s available.

    But perhaps most excitingly, for the cook, for the clown and the engineer, working with what’s in the cupboard is a much more engaging creative challenge. Walking around the world, we start to see ingredients we can use – the world starts to reveal itself in new ways.

    So, what will you cook for dinner this evening?

  • 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 this process as a cycle of the following stages.

    1. Observation

    Traditional design often begins with a design brief—a predefined problem to be solved. But Continuous Place-Based Design, with its focus on working with the existing dynamics of a place rather than imposing change from outside, begins with observation.

    Observation means more than a desk study or mapping exercise. It requires time spent in a place—experiencing it from different perspectives, noticing rhythms, interactions, and patterns of change. But observation isn’t just the first step. It is something we return to again and again, each time we make a change.

    2. Brief

    From observation, we begin to sense what is needed. The brief emerges as a way of distilling these needs into a set of design requirements.

    In traditional design, the brief is often seen as something to resolve upfront—reducing uncertainty as quickly as possible. But the Designer’s Paradox reminds us that a brief is never fully known at the start; understanding of the brief unfolds through the act of designing itself.

    Continuous Place-Based Design embraces this reality. The brief evolves over time, but it doesn’t necessarily converge to a single, finalised solution. Each iteration is the best response for now, while recognising that every intervention changes the system—and with it, the design brief itself.

    3. Ideas

    The creative phase of the process is deeply influenced by the place itself. Ideas are not imposed from outside but emerge from the system we are designing within.

    The designer’s role is not just to generate ideas, but to facilitate the emergence of ideas from place—to see what is latent, what is already forming, what might be supported. At the same time, by embedding ourselves in a place, we too become part of its system. Our ideas are shaped by this connection, rather than being external impositions.

    4. Make and Test

    This is where we intervene—where design moves from thought to action. We begin making changes to the system.

    Interventions can range from small-scale tests to large-scale changes—though an important principle stands: start small, learn, then scale out. Through making, we begin to see how the system responds.

    For example, in a housing development, instead of building an entire estate at once, we might start with a few houses, observing how the place changes and adapts before expanding further. The goal is not to eliminate uncertainty, but to work with the unforeseen consequences of our design decisions—using them as feedback to refine and update the brief.

    Back to Observation Again

    Having made our changes to the system, we go back to observation. But we are not back where we started: the system we are designing in has changed and we too are changed by that process. We become a more integrated part of the system we are designing in, better able to facilitate change that will bring forward thriving in that place.

  • 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 you can and see what you discover.

    These instructions are the basis of a psychoderive, an approach to rediscovering the city, proposed by Situationist philosopher Guy Debord.

    Debord wants us to see the city anew. To break the matrix of familiarity, the hierarchies of roads, the boundaries of commerce. And instead to see again the underlying contours of place and community.

    Familiarity dims the senses. The circle forces us onto new paths. This uncertainty sharpens our awareness again. To notice the gaps between buildings. The pockets of life thriving in forgotten spaces. Not knowing if there is a way through.

    This act—forcing us to see the familiar in a new way—is a perfect analogy for how regenerative design begins. That starting point is deep observation of place. In places we think we know, it’s about peeling back the skin that habit forms and seeing what lies beneath. Then we can connect more deeply with community and ecosystem. To see what ingredients we already have to work with. To spot potential we can help unlock. To recognise the successful patterns of place.

    To do all of that, we need to learn to look again. Guy Debord’s wine glass gives us a good starting point. What do you notice when you follow the circle?

    Further reading

    • It turns out I did my first psychoderives in 2018 – Read Derive#2, about a circle I tried to squash into the Square Mile.
    • And continuing on the theme of games that change the way we experience the city, check out the Left-Right game, which my daughter and I invented during lockdown.

  • 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, my brain is scanning for the keys; I spot the keys. But in that search what I fail to notice is that the pot plant above my desk hasn’t been watered for weeks and is about to die. 

    Then there’s another kind of noticing, an awareness that isn’t driven by a specific task. It’s a more open awareness, in which we we may be able to see things that we were not necessarily looking for. 

    For me, the starting point in design is observation. And not just the laser-focused, looking-for-a-thing type of observation, but a more open, breathing-in-of-the-situation kind. What does a place feel like? What is the energy of a group of people? What am I drawn towards or away from? 

    Our brains are incredible at spotting patterns, but only when we let them. Hyper-focused attention, while useful, often comes at the cost of perceiving the bigger picture.

    For many in the built-environment sector, work is a hyper-focused, task-orientated space. Deadlines don’t leave mush space for stepping back. But taking a break from work gives us the opportunity to look up and have a more general awareness.

    If you have holidays coming up, then I invite you to simply notice what you notice when you aren’t looking for anything in particular. What you see might reveal be the wider patterns of place, of community, of life that we aim to serve in our work as engineers (and other humans). 

  • 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 stop being sarcastic has been more intermittent—let’s call it a “New Year’s preference” rather than a resolution.

    But lately, I’ve been thinking that resolutions are a rather peculiar way to approach change. They tend to overplay our sense of agency while underestimating the myriad unseen factors that shape how our complex lives unfold.

    As 2025 approaches, I’m struck by the idea that the seeds of what will emerge in the coming year have already been planted throughout 2024. Taking inspiration from the Three Horizons Model, a better approach might be to ask:

    • What new patterns are emerging for me?
    • How might these patterns bear fruit?

    These are questions that take time to answer. In the living world, new shoots don’t appear until late winter or early spring—they emerge in their own time

    So, instead of making a New Year’s resolution, why not try something quieter? Pay attention to the patterns emerging in your life and work. Notice them, nurture them, and think about how you might align yourself with them. In doing so, you’ll work with the momentum that has already, quietly, been building beneath the surface.

  • 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 process of investigating what timber is currently—or could be—available for harvesting from the wood to use in our buildings. In a sense, we are learning to tell the wood from the trees.

    Through this process, I foresee the following levels of timber availability:

    • Ready – Timber that has already been felled, sawn, and seasoned—ready to be used immediately.
    • Ready for processing/seasoning – Timber that has been felled but still needs additional preparation, such as seasoning.
    • Ready for felling – Mature trees that are best harvested now to make the most of their timber potential.
    • Needs tending to – Timber that could become valuable in the future but requires care now—such as thinning or pruning lower branches—to ensure a high-quality crop later.
    • Needs time – Young trees that aren’t yet ready for harvesting but can be planned for as part of a long-term strategy.
    • Needs imagining – The trees that don’t yet exist. With thoughtful, long-term planning, we can envision trees growing in the future—trees that may one day be harvested, perhaps not by us, but by future generations.

    It’s this final phase that I find particularly magical: imagining the wood from the trees. It’s about seeing what’s missing and planting the seeds—both literal and metaphorical—that could flourish decades from now.

    All of this thinking reminds me that the role of the regenerative designer is imagine a thriving future and take steps towards creating that future. It begins with observation and imagination.

  • 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 design with observation stems from the final part of the goal of regenerative design: for humans and the living world to survive, thrive, and co-evolve.

    This isn’t a goal that can be achieved within our current extraction-based economy. Instead, it serves as a guiding “north star,” helping us think about how to shift our economy towards a more holistic way of operating.

    From that perspective, we see ourselves as collaborators with the rest of the living world—humans living and working in partnership with ecosystems, and humans collaborating across communities.

    As I’ve written before on this blog, collaboration requires both interest in the other party and assertiveness for our own ideas.

    Starting design by writing a design brief is an act of assertiveness—it focuses on what we want. Starting design by observing and investigating the needs of others—both the needs of other humans and those of the living world—means we begin the process with interest.

    Given humanity’s historic tendency (and that of certain groups within humanity) to over-assert ourselves on the rest of the living world, there’s no question: we need to increase our interest in other parties.

    Starting design with observation ensures we begin by understanding and addressing those needs first.

  • 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. The goal of regenerative design is not just to meet human needs but for human and living systems to survive, thrive, and co-evolve.

    This shift in focus changes the design process in significant ways.

    The first difference is that our goal is not simply the creation of a building. Instead, the building itself must contribute to greater thriving within the system it inhabits.

    This leads to a different starting point. Instead of asking, “What building do I need?” we ask, “What is the overall state of the system I’m working within?” Part of that system might include the immediate need for a building. But in this framing, we also consider the broader system needs.

    • What is the health of the ecosystem? Where is it thriving, and where is it depleted?
    • What is the health of the community? In what ways is it flourishing, and where are there unmet needs?

    By starting from these wider perspectives—and including many other factors we might observe—a more holistic design brief emerges. One that has the potential to address far more than our own immediate needs.

    But there’s another important reason to start design with observation. More on that tomorrow.

  • Design loop the loop

    Design is a continuous, looping process.

    It is a loop that begins with observing a situation, then establishing a brief for your work, developing ideas, and testing those ideas—trying them out in some way and observing what happens.

    Then we are back to observing again. Except we aren’t back in the same place, because the system has changed. It now includes your idea.

    The second time around, we are observing a changed world—a world altered by our developing and testing of ideas in response to a brief.

    Now, we can update the brief to create a better set of requirements—a set informed by what happened the last time we went around the loop.

    Each conversation with a client about needs and possibilities is a journey around the design loop.

    Each time we share sketches with the design team, we go around the loop once more.

    Assembling tender drawings and receiving tender responses—another orbit.

    Early contractor input, detailed design, on-site meetings to resolve design issues—all further revolutions.

    Every time we loop the loop, we learn something more about the system we are working in and how we are changing it.

  • 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.