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Wet behind the ears: how to stop the flooding

March 4, 2014 by chriswiseengineer

I have yet to see anyone explain how the recent floods can be tackled technically. The Governemnt’s Eric Pickles laments, “We perhaps relied too much on the Environment Agency’s advice.…we thought we were dealing with experts.”  But how expert do you actually need to be to deal with a flood problem? To find out, we gave our 1st year civil engineering students at UCL the task of solving a typical river flood. We took the Cornish seaside village of Mevagissey […]

Categories: published work • Tags: education, ignorance

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Royal Designers Summer School, Flamenco, and Michael Wolff

October 8, 2013 by chriswiseengineer

Making time for Time Jose Marin Plazuelo in his guitar workshop with his uncle Down to the Royal Designers Summer School, full of Stirling Prize winners, engineering laureates, brilliant newcomers and motivated “wildcard” design commissioners and planners, all living together for 4 days. I meet Adam Fairweather of Re-Worked, a young man making polymers from our dead coffee grounds. Adam is a not-for-profit research company, and he’s chosen to work for a subsistence salary.  But he’s a darling of big […]

Categories: published work • Tags: creativity, design, education, emotion, Music, performance

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BBC Radio 4 Interview: Chris Wise by Roger Law

August 19, 2013 by chriswiseengineer

Categories: published work • Tags: broadcasts, creativity, emotion, fun, role model

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Designer Putty

July 22, 2013 by chriswiseengineer

Recently, in the interests of sustainability I built a low garden wall out of recycled bricks and mortar. “Beautifully made. Performs beautifully. Made from cutting-edge high-quality materials, exquisitely designed. You can tell just by looking. From the very first encounter, you’ll realise there’s much more to it than meets the eye. Its true beauty may just be how astonishingly capable it is.” Of course, these words are far too skilfully written to be my own. They are actually Apple’s latest […]

Categories: published work • Tags: commoditisation, creativity, experimental, mass product, research

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Royal Designers Summer School 2013: Applications are now closed for this year

June 10, 2013 by chriswiseengineer

 The Royal Designers Summer School (RDI Summer School)  is designed to inspire those who attend to use their creativity and wit to serve the global community better at a time of great change. It is run as a  transformative experience, bringing together young and more experienced designers with “wild-cards”, those who are in some way touched by design. Its core purpose is to create the conditions to stimulate intellectual reflection   across many disciplines and generate insights, and in some case create the confidence to […]

Categories: published work

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A Moving Experience with Angel Belcher’s genetic batteries

May 28, 2013 by chriswiseengineer

A Moving Experience….a little more after my encounter with the human genome. Sometimes the world shifts on its axis, and it did for me at the Royal Academy of Engineering Global Grand Challenges Summit this spring. I was invited to meet the press beforehand, with a quiet American called Craig something-or-other. I spoke valiantly for a moment or two about my hopes for the education of the next generation of engineers, and why design is the stuff of life. Then […]

Categories: published work • Tags: Battery, Belcher, genetics, RAEng, Venter

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Expedition’s bridge design work takes wing in a poem….

May 22, 2013 by chriswiseengineer

Bridge Poetry by Joseph Butler, the “Blacksmith Poet” You know, poetry and engineering….they should get together more often. As an example, here’s a fine poem written by Joe Butler, originally for a special Rotary Lecture at Shepperton, after a conversation with Chris Wise and Ed McCann in Expedition’s London studio, 2013. The poem was commissioned by by Bill Hewlett, Costain’s Technical Director. Bridge Poem #1 A stone’s throw, maybe, or perhaps to be more accurate, a bowshot’s length away. And, if […]

Categories: published work • Tags: bridge, Butler, Chris, Ed, Infinity, Joseph, McCann, Millennium, poetry, Wise

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Genomes, NASA and batteries made from bacteria at RAEng Global Grand Challenge Summit

March 21, 2013 by chriswiseengineer

The Royal Academy of Engineering hosted a pretty wonderful 2 day summit on the Grand Challenges facing the planet, and how engineers could respond to them. You can read about it here, on the blog from the summit: http://globalgrandchallengessummit.wordpress.com/ I had to give a thought piece provocation for the education debate, which you can see below: In its finer moments, engineering changes the physical world for the use and benefit of Man. Engineering is an art that uses science and is […]

Categories: published work • Tags: education, experimental, nature, research, responsibility, role model, spirit of enquiry

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Locking horns over Sustainability….

February 25, 2013 by chriswiseengineer

Can engineers and architects learn to share sustainability? There is a call out from the Royal Academy of Engineering for Centres of Excellence in Sustainable Building Design. Prompted by propositional work done by the Academy over the past 5 years, led by Doug King, it hints at the evolution of a new breed of engineer who can integrate complex technological systems into buildings. In a sustainable fashion, whatever that means. The Academy is hoping to raise £30m or so to […]

Categories: published work • Tags: education, ignorance, research, responsibility, role model, skill, sustainability

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