Thread by @BioengineerGM

Introducing "Invisible Bridges"--my column in @theNAEng periodical The Bridge. The inaugural piece explores the notion of "composite minds" for #engineering with inspiration from Ove Arup, Walter Gropius, & #Bauhaus (now in its centenary).

nae.edu/221310/Invisib…

@theNAEng Arup sometimes carried a “pair of extra-long chopsticks in his top pocket, to poach enticing dishes from his neighbor’s plate.” Were these chopsticks perhaps a metaphor for something else? As in, how to pick and transfer nutrients across what we resignedly call “disciplines”?

@theNAEng A real dichotomy exists in meeting a client’s needs and generating profits versus achieving the moral aims of a work, as Arup reminded.

@theNAEng Perhaps that’s why the current relentless calls for “interdisciplinary,” “multidisciplinary,” “transdisciplinary,” or whatever-buzzword-is-in-vogue engineering feel simultaneously vital and vapid...

@theNAEng ...Hardly a professional meeting now exists where the “silo mentality” is not criticized, even as it persists in practice. The divisions so industriously created are now the ones we struggle to remove.

@theNAEng How then can engineers deepen their reflections on the connections between problems, their solutions, and their contexts, connections that Arup thought were “so ruthlessly severed”?

@theNAEng “We cannot avoid the splitting up of the business of building among dozens or hundreds of collaborators. Specialization is the way civilization moves forward—and perhaps it is the way it will destroy itself,” Arup wrote in 1968

@theNAEng At its core, that building would be requisitely unfinished and intended for “people’s needs instead of luxury needs” as the Bauhaus architect Hannes Meyer put it. That’s a design beyond individual preferences and also beyond chic and cost-effectiveness.

@theNAEng This is not some modernist bravery; this is open-minded engineering.

cc: @RBeasSystems @stewartbrand @systemscatalyst
@Phil_Engineer @RussellProf
@David_S_Wilson @langdonw
@good2reader @AlBunshaft
@thor_misko @DEHEdgerton @RobertLepenies
@innovationwonk @bscprof45

@theNAEng @RBeasSystems @stewartbrand @systemscatalyst @Phil_Engineer @RussellProf @David_S_Wilson @langdonw @good2reader @AlBunshaft @thor_misko @DEHEdgerton @RobertLepenies @innovationwonk @bscprof45 We need to have a more honest and scrupulous discussion on why certain constraints and conventions exist. This is when the conversations about buildings (and engineering) cease being primarily technical and become more culturally—and morally—germane.