Thoughts for the Weekend & this Week’s Links

Two Tribes.

I was sitting in the architecture studio yesterday listening to students explain their design ideas when we heard that whirring air-raid siren.

I’m too young to remember the Vietnam War, although I do remember the ‘boat people’ at RAF Sopley in the New Forest. My first news memories, alongside the background threat of nuclear annihilation, are the Solidarity movement in Poland, the Iranian revolution and people holding candles in New York after Lennon was murdered.

My fifty or so years have been marked by continuous crisis. There was perhaps a brief period in the mid-90s when things seemed calmer, but even then, there were the Yugoslav wars, and The Troubles were still in the news. Then 9/11. And war and crisis of one kind or another ever since.

That siren still sends shivers down my spine. Remember the opening to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes. I just re-listened.

Many millions have actually lived through these wars and crises. But for most of us, if we never turned on the TV, we’d have no idea. There would be much less fear.

Now maybe we humans can’t get along — but my ‘in-real-life’ experience suggests that, for the most part, we do. I can’t help thinking there are a few troublemakers stirring and stoking their own agendas.

The news is a business. Nowhere more obvious than YouTube, where every title and thumbnail begs you to click — many of them stoking the same fear because fear gets views. Views make money.

I was scrolling through the comments on one of my own videos the other day and stopped at someone’s essay about why what I’d proposed wasn’t any good, why she preferred it her way, and that if this were Dragon’s Den, she’d be out.

Fair enough, but it made me think.

I put forward ideas for how I’d change a house. To solve a problem. To make it better. I’m not trying to win. I’m not pitching.

More — here’s how I think about it, and this could work.

She’d clearly thought hard about it. Wrote an essay. But couldn’t help defaulting to the taking-sides frame. In or out. Win or lose.

That’s the thing missing. Not agreement — critical thinking.

The ability to look at something, turn it around, find what’s useful in it, disagree with the rest, and move on with your thinking slightly changed.

Design teaches that. Not because designers are special, but because the process demands it. Observation, analysis, idea — looping, not linear. You can’t just pick a side and defend it. The brief keeps pushing back.

In the studio yesterday, that’s what I’m trying to give the students.

Not a style.
Not a doctrine.
A way of thinking.

Put something on paper that says — this is me, this is what I think, and here’s why.

Then be prepared to have it questioned.

And question it yourself first.

I think that’s how we move forward.

Not two tribes.

Just people willing to think out loud.

Peace.

This Week’s Links:

Frankie Goes to Hollywood — Two Tribes
The opening 30 seconds still do it.

My latest video (9 minutes)
The usual meddling with houses.

Design hacks for dog owners
I was in the Apple Store in Southampton last weekend. A man was walking his dog around it. What happens when it cocks its leg? Anyway, here are some design tips for dog owners.

How to make perfect scrambled eggs
Useful. Important. Civilisation hangs by a thread.

McCartney: Man on the Run
I watched this last night. Very enjoyable. My favourite Beatle.

And my favourite non-famous McCartney track
The lyrics are total nonsense: ‘Ketchup, soup and puree, don’t get left behind’. The man is a total genius.

And finally…
I watched this video earlier in the week. Now, what she says can’t be true, coz it’s probably not cited by the BBC, but what if 30% of it is true? But there again, who’s she working for? And who he’s working for may be the bigger question.

Main Image credit: Some people hear an idea and think it’s a competition.