Author: lpKvTd1i34

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100 years old

Today my grandfather, Peter Cartwright, would have been 100 years old. He was a research chemist, but I always saw him as a Renaissance man, showing talents for a wide range of pursuits- creative, scientific, crafts, adventuring and telling a good yarn.

I have a lot to thank him for. But today this shines out. When I was about six or seven, I told him I wanted to be an architect. He showed me how to draw a building in cross-section and plan views. This blew mind. For the next few years I would spend my spare time imaging and drawing building layouts, laying the groundwork for career decisions I made much later.

He died when I was twenty, and he never knew that I went into engineering. I keep a photo of him on my desk, that way he can still see the projects I’m working on that I know would have fascinated him.

Happy birthday Gramps.

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Element design

There are over 250 chemical elements. But at a fooling workshop* today, I was reminded of the creative power of just four: earth, water, fire and air.

Each one conjures its own meanings and images. And like a metaphysical rock, paper, scissors, they exist in relation to each other.

In design, we can use them to ask: what qualities are present in this system?

Earth is structure, solidity, firmness. It’s hardware. It moves reluctantly, suddenly, with inertia.

Water is flow. Flow in rivers and in vessels. It transports. It’s soft and powerful, and can be relentless. It is life.

Fire is the spark. Energy. The compulsion to act. It crackles. It metabolises. It consumes. It needs stoking.

Air is breath. More life. We breathe it in and out. It’s reciprocal — inside me, then inside you. It’s sound, it’s information, it’s communication.

How do these metaphorical elements show up in the system you’re working in?

How do they relate to each other?

Which ones are missing?

What happens if you weave a new one in?

*The workshop was The Fool’s Body, led by the brilliant Holly Stoppit and Dominique Hester:

https://www.hollystoppit.com/workshops/the-fools-body
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Serious humour

Yesterday I went to Grayson Perry’s brilliant Delusions of Grandeur exhibition at the Wallace Collection. If you work in Central London and can get there before it closes in October then do. So much to take away, including this, which I grabbed me:

‘The opposite of serious is not humour….The opposite of serious is trivial…Humour is a seriously important quality…Humour is the vitally profound art of being human.’

Yes!

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Absurd fruit salad

My recent food harvesting metaphor keeps on bearing fruit!

I arrive at a workshop to see a buffet of fruit.

Tasty, but I wager none of it is local and most only half of it is in season.

So what we have is a system that is very good and delivering out of season fruit from far away while local, in-season fruit wilts on the trees.

If you were to start from a blank sheet of paper you wouldn’t design this. 

A system that is efficient and scaled up in every step. 

And absurd in its outcome.

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What to Do When You’re Stuck – Turning the Kalideascope in Conceptual Design

This week, we delivered Session 3 of our Introduction to Conceptual Design for Structural Engineers, part of the ongoing programme we run with the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE).

In this session, we explored what happens when design thinking gets stuck. When initial ideas run out, when the first solution doesn’t quite fit, or when you hit a creative block — what do you do next?

The answer: you turn the Kalideascope.

Turning the Kalideascope is about deliberately shifting perspective to unlock new ideas. We introduced two practical techniques:
• Ask What If — to reframe problems, imagine alternatives, and expand possibilities.
• Professional Palette — using familiar structural forms as creative prompts for rapid ideation.

We also explored the distinction between conceptual design and detailed design, recognising that the early concept phase is the time for quick experimentation and testing, even when information is incomplete.

The session closed with the key question:

How do you know if an idea is a good one?
The answer lies in defining clear tests linked to the brief — giving designers a structured way to evaluate their early-stage ideas.

We’ll wrap up the series next week with Session 4, where we’ll bring these tools together into a structured design process.

Read more about our Introduction to Conceptual Design for Structural Engineers course.

Find out more
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Designing experiments in policy change – lessons from RDL Cohort 4 Session 6 hosted at Chatham House

On February 4th, our current cohort of the Regenerative Design Lab returned to Chatham House London. In this session hosted by our delivery partners, the Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator, our aim was to deepen understanding of system change, policy change and the Ambition Loop model.

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Exploring Regenerative Design with Hawkins Brown

On 30th January 2025, Oliver delivered the keynote for Hawkins Brown’s Regenerative Design Research Week, bringing together ideas on how regenerative design can reshape architectural practice.

As the final session in a week-long series of talks and workshops, this keynote helped tie together discussions on regenerative approaches in architecture. The session explored how organisations can map their activities against larger systems of change and provided practical frameworks for embedding regenerative principles into design practice.

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