chris wise engineer

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What engineers can learn from Stradivarius….

February 25, 2013 by chriswiseengineer

Over 300 years ago, Antonio Stradivari was making beautiful violins, each weighing a few hundred grams, yet filling the largest concert hall with soul-lifting sound. Stradivari would never have said, “For safety, I’ll double the thickness of the wood.” If designed like most modern buildings, his violins would play like tree-trunks. Stradivari‘s structures are balanced natural systems: no imitations of birds’ nests or deliberate distortions of geometry in the name of “architecture” here. Today’s engineering is too full of “tree-trunk” […]

Categories: published work • Tags: design, mastery, nature, overdesign, performance

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Peter Rice remembered

November 30, 2012 by chriswiseengineer

Down in Frome, UFO country, I speak to an eclectic audience about footballer Bobby Charlton, and how attempting to shoot like him had influenced the anthropomorphic side of my engineering. How, as a small boy, I’d watched James Burke gripping the nation on the BBC as Apollo 8 disappeared behind the moon, triggering my own later search for technological thrills. I don’t mind talking about this stuff any more….I think it’s ok to be a nerd, ok to have heroes, […]

Categories: published work, reviews • Tags: experimental, mastery, role model, spirit of enquiry

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Designing for the Great Recovery

September 7, 2012 by chriswiseengineer

On the train I overhear 3 old blokes talking: “I can’t get too excited about the Olympic swimming ‘cos you can only see their heads”….and I think of the captain of the Titanic saying something similar about icebergs. From the Titanic, it’s a natural jump to hear the construction industry saying the same thing about its use of materials. Watch out for the bit you can’t see, I want to shout! It’s gonna get you! Now we have Sophie Thomas […]

Categories: published work • Tags: astronomy, design, education, experimental, fun, mass product, role model, sustainability

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No hiding place….measure design by performance

May 7, 2012 by chriswiseengineer

Testing testing testing….isn’t it a shame that the building industry doesn’t have something like Nissan’s Delta Wing experimental racing car? You may have seen it in the paper, engineered to race later this month (June) at Le Mans. It’s a long, sleek, black thing, and it certainly has something about it, at least for 8 year old boys and Jeremy Clarkson. Heir to the Batmobile, for Tin-Tin fans it looks more like a rocket to the moon than a car. […]

Categories: published work • Tags: design, experimental, performance, spirit of enquiry

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An engineer in their Lordships’ House

March 7, 2012 by chriswiseengineer

Off to rub shoulders with the Establishment. First stop…the House of Lords to give “evidence” to their Lordships’ committee on STEM education. Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, not Alan Titchmarsh. Ushered in through Westminster Hall, paying engineering obeisance to its technologically staggering 600 year old hammerbeam vault. Following in the footsteps of the soon-to-be-condemned Charles 1st and Guy Fawkes, I thought I knew just how they felt. But not to worry, their Lordships were charm itself, perceptive and engaged in […]

Categories: published work • Tags: astronomy, design, education, mastery, research

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Mastery and the tree-climbing fish….

February 7, 2012 by chriswiseengineer

Back from Brazil comes the Useful Simple Trust’s “Mr Sustainable”, Dan Epstein, with someone’s masterplan for us to review. It’s all rectangular, glass, no sense of place, sterility without redemption. “Absurd” is how our urban designer describes it.   2,000 years after Rome, 160 years after Haussmann, 40 years after Gaia, has our BRIC-ish masterplanner learned absolutely nothing? For there’s no plan, and we can’t detect a “master”. It’s a sadly familiar scenario. His design is ignorant of everything good that’s […]

Categories: published work • Tags: architecture, astronomy, mastery, nature, role model, skill, spirit of enquiry, sustainability

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Why small practices are genetically important

November 7, 2011 by chriswiseengineer

If I were a rhinoceros not an engineer in a little practice, I’d be on the WWF’s endangered species list. My contribution to global diversity would be gazed at in wonder on national telly with David Attenborough. But it isn’t. Again, as a rhino, princely patrons at the head of worldwide organizations would try everything they could to feed and water me so I didn’t become extinct. Why? Because genetic variation is healthy. So why is the construction industry remorselessly […]

Categories: published work • Tags: commoditisation, mastery, role model, skill, spirit of enquiry

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Preface review for the book: “The Size of Shape”, Agusti Obiol

November 2, 2011 by chriswiseengineer

Engineering is not an abstract condition….it is an Art practiced on behalf of society by a special subset of all human beings. One explanation of the special role of the structural engineer is to set up 3 dimensional space and to keep it there, for use, in the 4th dimension. Of course, every young child experiments with this, and so in our formative years we may all be engineers in general, and structural engineers in particular. In those early years […]

Categories: reviews • Tags: design, education, role model, spirit of enquiry

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Who judges the judges in design competitions?

October 7, 2011 by chriswiseengineer

In recent weeks I’ve been involved in some well-publicised competitions as a loser, a winner, and a judge. And I don’t want to carp, crow, or rejoice respectively about my role in each of them, but I have been reflecting on the great art of the Competition, the significance of the Prize, and the merits of the Jury process. Take the competition classics: Paxton’s blotting paper sketches, and Utzon’s scribbles. Both have legendary status as the conceptual precursors to great […]

Categories: published work • Tags: architecture, competitions, creativity, design, emotion, responsibility, users

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