Author: Oliver Broadbent

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How to resuscitate a design brief – stage 1

Design briefs become lifeless when we treat them as fixed, and unchanging.

We bring life to them when we allow them to evolve.

The first stage is to make your design brief a live, editable document (with changes tracked if necessary).

The brief should prompt questions – write those down on the brief.

New requirements will be discovered – add those in so they don’t get lost.

New possibilities for what you want emerge – note these down too.

Gather the people who care about the brief to review these changes, challenge or approve them.

A living brief is one that is being worked on.

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Is your brief dead?

You are midway through a project. Ask yourself, has my design brief changed, or has it stayed the same.

If it hasn’t changed, then you should check if your design brief is very nearly, or very actually, dead.

A lifeless brief breathes no life into the design process

A brief without a pulse clings to its original constraints without shifting the boundaries.

An ex-brief is one that looks nothing like what you are working on.

A stiff brief is unmoved by new discoveries made during the design process.

A deceased brief ceases to be of any use.

If you suspect these symptoms then your brief needs urgent resuscitation. Because in design, a healthy brief is alive.

(It is possible that you brief may just be resting, in which case you need to wake it up).

[With apologies to Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch]

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The living brief

This week, I’ve been updating and consolidating my writing on design briefs. The design brief is a fundamental component of the design process, and it is a core topic in our design teaching.

But I realise in gathering together my writing that there is an idea I have been dancing around without naming it.

A design brief is not something that is static that we define at the start of a project. It is something that evolves, and grows as part of the design process.

I’ve started to call this the Living Brief. And you can read all about it here.

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A conversation with Hazel Hill Wood

At Hazel Hill Wood, we treat the place not just as a setting but an active participant in the work. A practice I learnt there is, on arrival, to tell the wood what I have come to do.

What follows is a reflection on that practice (first published on the Hazel Hill site) and a question that is an underlying motivation in my work on regenerative design.

A practice I learnt from Alan Heeks, the founder of Hazel Hill Trust, is, on arrival, to tell the wood what I had come here to do. And so I sat down this morning, by the Gatekeeper tree to share a fairy ordinary to-do list. But as I started, something else came out. 

The following is a transcript of that conversation with the wood.

It is hard to know if you want us here. All the people that come. Would it be better off if we stayed away? I am not attuned enough to the signals from the wood to be able to sense the answer. 

So I come at the question from a different angle. 

Ecosystems show us that every component evolves to play a part. Not survival of the fittest but survival of the whole. The system evolves to maximise the life-fullness that is possible within those limits. 

Humans have evolved as part of ecosystems, have evolved to play a part. To live well, even, in harmony with the rest of life. 

And yet, in much of the Global North, we seem to have drifted away from that relationship. At a societal level, we no-longer live in strong relation with or pay much attention to this wider pattern of life. So that our collective actions serve to deplete rather than enhance the ecosystems of which we are part. 

You are a place to help restore that relationship. A small node in a much wider movement of people who want to establish and mainstream a different relationship between humans and the rest of the living world. A relationship of attention, care and mutual thriving. 

At Hazel Hill Wood people can come to discover or rediscover their relationship with the living world. And can find healing and wellbeing through connecting with this wider web of life. 

When we are here we will treat you with respect. 

We will play an active part in seeking to grow the life-fullness of this place. 

And we will bring people under the boughs of your canopy, so that they can take what they learn here and create wider influence wherever they come from. 

To return to where I started, I cannot tell what you think of all of this, but I hope that our intrusion on the peace and tranquility of this place can have a positive impact here, and on ecosystems further afield. 

And I hope that you feel this is worthwhile. In the meantime, I’ll continue trying to listen out for an answer.

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Spotting people spotting kingfishers

My workshop today is in an office along the same river catchment as the one I live on, so my commute takes me deep into the Frome valley.

I know kingfishers nest here but I almost never spot them.

Luckily, I’ve found a hack. Look for someone with a massive telephoto lens. Stand nearby. Follow their gaze.

Today’s kingfisher was much closer than I expected, right on the near bank of the river.

A recurring theme in my posts over the last couple of weeks has been this idea of ecological participation.

Not just reducing harm. Not just “less bad”. But actively playing a part in enhancing the living systems we are part of.

That feels like a leap. And it is. And I think the first step is to start noticing differently.

Seeing that we are surrounded by life. Remembering that it’s there. Recognising that it’s the container for all that we do. I see it as a pathway on the mindset shift from separation to interdependence.

Because when we notice, we start to care. And when we care, we start to make different decisions.

Even as I write this, it’s easy to take the life that surrounds us for granted.

I’m fortunate to have a river like this running through my corner of the city.

And still, most days, I cycle past without really seeing it.

Maybe I’m not very good at spotting kingfishers.

So for now I will start with spotting kingfisher spotters.

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Repair as an ambition loop

In my previous post I wrote about how United Repair Centre are creating the infrastructure that is renewing repair in the fashion sector. 

I think their work is a great example of an ambition loop beginning to form. 

An ambition loop is a simple model for system change that connects three drivers:

  • Community need
  • Business opportunity
  • Political priority 

When these align, they can reinforce each other and allow a system intervention to scale. 

In the case of United Repair Centre, we can see all three drivers in place and beginning to reinforce each other. 

Community need

There is a need for meaningful work. 

Repair offers:

  • skilled employment
  • a route into employment 
  • the revaluing of craft that is at risk of disappearing. 

Business opportunity

Brands are under pressure to reduce waste, particularly in countries like France where the imperative for company take-back of waste is so high. 

Businesses also the opportunity to see repair as a valuable differentiator. 

There’s a chance to build stronger, longer-term customer relationships. 

Government priority

  • Reduce waste 
  • Create employment opportunities
  • Growing interest in onshoring work. 

–

Repair brings these drivers together into a reinforcing loop.

By training repairers through their academy, United Repair Centre creates a workforce that can reliably deliver repair services.

Businesses can then offer repair, building customer loyalty while diverting materials from landfill.

Government gains confidence that industry can respond to circular economy legislation.

This, in turn, drives more businesses to adopt repair, and more people into these roles.

What’s interesting is that change here depends on two things:

  • the existence of the mechanism
  • the confidence that grows from seeing it work

Once the system operates at a minimum viable level, the loop can begin to reinforce itself.

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Steel reuse: writing a new blue book

Structural steel reuse is on the rise, as this month’s Structural Engineer articles show.

But what might be seen as a material innovation is actually a shift in something more fundamental.

I see this work as our industry writing a new “blue book” on the operations shelf of the systems bookcase.

In other words, we are building the system that makes it possible for a designer to specify reused steel.

Because to make reuse work, the industry is having to create:

  • toolkits for recovery
  • processes for pre-demolition audits
  • new ways of coordinating demolition and new construction
  • infrastructure for holding and processing stock

None of this is visible in the final building.

But without it, reuse doesn’t happen.

In the systems bookcase, the operations shelf contains the factors that constrain or enable design decisions.

Everything listed above sits there.

In terms of transition, this is Horizon 2 (which we colour blue) — the in-between space where new practices can emerge that are both viable in the existing system but are a significant step towards the system we want to create. 

Let’s be clear: steel reuse is still a long way from being a process that is life-giving.

But it can significantly reduce the embodied impact of construction —

which is, at least, ecological-adjacent.

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Set design for a training room

If your brief is to design the set for a theatre piece set in a construction industry training room, then make sure it includes the following:

White boards. Spare furniture. A clock that doesn’t work. 

Security blinds, locked shut to keep intruders out, as well as the sunshine. 

White board fluid.  Extension leads. TV on a stand. 

Unconnected audio equipment. Post-it notes. Antibacterial fluid. 

Green cables. Red cables. Blue cables. Yellow cables. 

Archive boxes. Abandoned teleconference equipment. 

Laminated instruction sheets. 

Flip chart architecture. Highlighters. Slips of paper with the wifi code. Speakers. Panel heater.

And a hat stand. 

Arguably (I am sure I have argued this before) learning should be the objective of a high-functioning company. We don’t just do a thing: each we do it, we learn from it and do it better. (Otherwise lessons learnt become lessons lost.)

If learning were the organisational objective,, then the training room wouldn’t look like this. 

It wouldn’t be a storage space for forgotten equipment and excess furniture. 

It would be the nerve centre of learning. A place that celebrates learning rather than treats the experience as second rate. 

Just imagine what that room would look like.

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Fuelling the Regenerative Design Lab

This March we are holding the Spring Residential workshops for Cohort 6 and Cohort 7 of the Regenerative Design Lab. Appropriately I was down at Hazel Hill Wood this weekend for the wood’s Wood Chop Challenge — the annual event that provides firewood for that heats the retreat buildings used by many groups who come to the wood to learn, including the Lab.

For me this process captures something of the essence of regenerative practice.

The firewood is both product and process.

It both meets a human need — staying warm and comfortable while in the wood. And it meets the wider need of the ecosystem through careful management of the woodland. And, what’s more, the work of producing it — felling, chopping, transporting and stacking — becomes part of the experience of that place.

In that sense the Wood Chop Challenge is a small example of what regenerative practice can look like: meeting our needs while strengthening the living systems we depend on.

You can read more about it on the Hazel Hill website here.

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A flow for thinking about regenerative infrastructure

A final post this week to draw together the long form posts into a simple flow. 

Across these posts I’ve explored how infrastructure shapes the metabolism of the economy, the insufficiency of system resilience on its own, and how mindsets shape our view of infrastructure.

Taken together they suggest a simple flow for thinking about regenerative infrastructure. 

Mindset>Brief>Ideas>Tests>Iterate

Mindset

We start by using the Changing Mindsets motif to challenge our assumptions about infrastructure

Brief

We create a brief that moves beyond delivering infrastructure efficiently to seeing infrastructure as part of what enables humans and the living world to thrive together.

Ideas

We fill our Kalideacope with two libraries:

  • Resilient systems architecture
  • Ecological participation patterns

And we turn our Kalideascope with an additional library:

  • Regenerative mindset prompts

Different combinations generate new possibilities for infrastructure design

Tests

We test the ideas against three criteria for regenerative infrastructure:

  • Metabolism — does the system operate within ecological limits?
  • Ecological participation — does it strengthen living systems?
  • Resilience — is the system well structured?

Iterate

Keep going until the idea meets the brief.

Or we change the brief to a better brief because the brief we first thought of is almost certainly not the right one.

And that shouldn’t be a surprise because regenerative infrastructure is not the conventional way of thinking about infrastructure. We should expect the thinking process to be hard. 

These tools are here to help.