A Manifesto for the Design Tripos by Visiting Professor Harbinder Singh Birdi

A Manifesto for the Design Tripos by Visiting Professor Harbinder Singh Birdi

Photo Credit : Transport for London

To face the challenges that lie ahead in designing and creating environments that will respond to the needs of both urbanisation and climate change, there will be a need for designers to be able to be cognisant of the many disciplines that shape these environments. We will need creative polymaths to help lead and inform the way in which designers consider how we design, procure and eventually construct. 

Whilst the current metric for organisations success is a measure of productivity and profit, an approach first championed by Henry Ford over a hundred years ago in promoting specialisation in industries that make objects, this thinking continues to  be used to promote efficiencies and signifiers of success in the worlds of architecture and engineering. 

Consultancies and organisations now promote a project’s success on their ability to manage the creative specialists but to do so only creative polymaths, individuals skilled in a broad knowledge of these specialisms can best coordinate the effort of this inter-disciplinary collective. To achieve this what is required is what the Greeks termed ‘Polytekhnos’ ‘Skilled in the many arts’. 

In an ever more complex world where we are asked to design for a myriad of communities with a diverse range of needs the Polymath has never been in such demand. The master’s in design Tripos aims to equip you with the creative skills and understanding of architecture, engineering and material science. This knowledge will allow you when either designing or leading teams to meaningfully weave together the output of the myriad of disciplines that are involved in a projects delivery.  

With governments continually looking for better ways to deal with the climate emergency, the build environment appears time and time again as an obvious sector to look to find gains in minimising the materials and carbon used to create and sustain the buildings and structures we use. The need to appreciate and understand the performance of these materials that we use to build, is critical and in doing so we can justify from inception, the materials used and how they will not only affect the environment but also quantifying the lifecycle costs and the benefits for the user groups. 

The artist, Brian Eno coined the term ‘Senius’, by combining scene and genius, he argued that everything made is actually created by a ‘scene of geniuses ‘ rather than by a sole individual. We live in a world where we have an ever-growing number of geniuses the challenge we have when we are designing is finding the genius who can use their expertise and judgement to both quantitatively and qualitatively co-ordinate and realise an array of interventions within the built environment. Designers are uniquely placed to challenge fragmented responsibilities, putting in place principles around which different organisations can unite. 

As governments around the world are asking designers to do, more with less, to minimise the impact on our environment and to listen and be empathetic of the user, social value, the resultant good that is achieved in people’s lives because of our designs will soon be a metric that all projects are measured by. The Master of Design Tripos will equip future creatives to not only have an appreciation of the inter-disciplinary and technical requirements that are necessary to deliver projects but also the way in which our lives and communities will be enhanced.