The Art Of Changing The World

Chris Wise likes to explore the heavens with his telescope, he likes to play the guitar, and he likes to doodle. More than most, he appreciates the power of the doodle and when he talks, it's like listening to more doodling. You have no idea where he's going or what he'll end up with, but the loops and swirls and branches will develop in the most fascinating way. Sometimes the doodle stops making sense; there are jumps, non-sequiturs, but they always lead back to theme.

The theme is improving the world for benefit of mankind.

Which, he says, is what engineers do.

The Millennium Bridge began with a doodle. So, too, did the London 2012 Velodrome.

Big projects worth millions of pounds that involved hundreds of people with innumerable specialties, that began in a humble way.

With a line.

But how else, is one supposed to begin?

I write this over and over again when I take drawing and painting classes. So often, our attempts to create are confounded by an all-too-reasonable desire to impress.

Chris Wise has won many prestigious awards and is a fellow of RIBA, the RSA and the Royal Academy of Engineering who granted him their most prestigious medal. He has worked all over the world with the likes of Rogers, Foster and Piano. His work is useful, impressive and changes lives and it all began in a back bedroom with a doodle.

The link to his company website is here.

At the end of his talk at Rook Lane Arts recently, a member of the audience asked Wise for some advice about his son, who hoped to be an engineer. He was about to take a year out after his studies and he wanted to know if his son should accept an internship, play his violin or climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Wise replied that if the man's son wanted a job, he should take the internship.

"That's what I told him," said the man, somewhat triumphantly.

"But," said Wise, "If he wants to be a better engineer, he should play his violin or climb a mountain."

Here's a brief animation of the talk that Chris Wise gave. I made it in real-time on the iPad, as he spoke, using the Brushes 2 app.