This event took place online on 26 October 2021 following the Covid-19 crisis and just prior to COP 26. An international audience gathered with a panel to discuss how disruption can play a positive role in changing the way we work and our relationship with the built environment and nature.
You can review the recording of the event in full. Many who wanted to attend were unable to, and it also repays revisiting the rich discussion generated by a diverse panel.
We have just lived through the most disruptive period in living memory. The direct impact of the COVID19 epidemic has shifted the way we live – irreversibly in some instances – as well as bringing into focus areas of social activism such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. Politicians are now accepting that the impacts of climate change may be equally, if not more, disruptive, on a global scale.
But disruption is not always wholly negative, as it can give us the opportunity to find positive change and create new sustainable markets. This is the theme of the Conversation chaired by Natasha Watson of Buro Happold Engineering. She defines some of the different positive ways we can look at disruption.
She reminds us that the crumbling of our incumbent systems and attitudes can pave the way for us to re-build in a more effective, sustainable and equitable way. Sometimes we need to seek out disruption to ensure that we can ‘build back better’. We know, for example, things will need to change with regard to equity and climate change.
Often disruption is thought of as technology driven, but as we have seen it can equally be from policy and legislation, workplace and behavior choices. Disruption is often seen as a means of protest but it can also result in democratic consensus on the quickest way to achieve the best result. She points out that with policies such as the Congestion Charge, cities can have great impact with disruption. It is often in less developed societies where we are more likely to see new ways ‘leapfrog’ the status quo because they have less in vested in the current way of doing things. Developed economies could share much with them in this area.
While capitalist economies may seek out technical disruption for competitive purposes it is also possible to have a grander motive. A historical example of this was the clockwork radio, invented to remove the need for mains or battery-powered devices in remote communities particularly in Africa. This opened up the possibility of reaching a far-flung population with important information to combat issues such as AIDS.
Charlie Paton, Managing Director of the Sea Water Greenhouse has invented and developed an innovative and disruptive technology which cools and humidifies using seawater evaporators in arid regions, growing food with the resulting fresh water. The grander motive behind the seawater greenhouse is to eradicate conflict. A map of arid regions and recent conflicts over water clearly illustrates the point.
The problem for the Seawater Greenhouse is that the established alternative in the arid regions where they will have most impact is desalination using energy generated from plentiful fossil fuels.
To be a truly successful disruption requires more than technical genius. However the beauty of the idea may prevail if the right circumstances – social, political and environmental – are in place.
It is perhaps obvious that disruption can be seen as positive force when the motives are as grand as the reduction of conflict caused by water shortage. But what happens where you are dealing with city infrastructure? Ellie Cosgrave is the Director of The Community Interest Company and Research at Publica. She is also Associate Professor of Urban Innovation and Policy at UCL. For her the idea of being disruptive conjures what can be quite dark and scary images of uncertainty, fear and breaking. In her view, to be truly transformative, disruption must also nurture connection, rebuilding, and a sense of possibility.
So clearly in Ellie Cosgrave’s eyes, if we are to address the most challenging issues of our time, we need to nurture visions of the world we want to see, as well as remind ourselves of the power and possibilities that unfold once human endeavour is allowed to flourish. In this case the motive is more important than the means of getting there, but as with the other examples there is a sense that disruption is a means of healing something that has been broken.
Jo Lucas believes a more visionary approach is required to influence positive outcomes. She believes that when delivering in complex, ambiguous environments, setting up the right connections, networks, relationships and conversations is as essential as implementing strategy, processes and systems. She proposes perhaps the most disruptive shift of all the speakers.
Jo Lucas is co-founder of Co.Cre8, an SME that supports projects to flourish through Knowledge, Networks and Behaviours. She also leads the not-for-profit Ego to Eco set up to effect industry wide mind-shifts from the current ego-centric model to a more eco-aware viewpoint inspiring collective action through art, stories and connection.
Working with the artist Wolfgang Buttress she uses the metaphor of the mycelium a vast subterranean network found in nature. “It is time to activate the mycelium, listen and amplify the hidden voices and create spaces where we can envision a future we want to take collective action to step toward.”
Artificial Intelligence is often seen as a disruptive at an intellectual level, with the dire warnings of eminent scientists that it could disrupt the purpose of mankind itself. Others have argued that it is ‘neither artificial nor intelligent’ and we can put it to work problem solving only if, as with the seawater greenhouse, we can define that problem in the first place.
Dev Amratia, is Founder and MD of AI firm nPlan a forecasting service for complex construction projects. The construction process is a high risk environment which makes it liable to many external disruptions with attendant programme and cost overruns. It is somewhat ironic therefore that this perceived disruptive technology should be applied to trying to understand the complexities of the construction process and predict with more certainty disruptive elements within it, thus creating more certainty (and less disruption) for those investing and working within it.
A really interesting audience conversation ensued – especially the panelist observation on the power disciplines to enable change which isn’t reliant on government buy in or policy. “How can we encourage engineers, for example, to be confident in these disruptive discourses that are people-centred and not profit-centred?”
Others wondered how we can encourage engineers to be more confident in these disruptive discourses. Ellie talked about ‘rules’; designers like to break, bend and loosen rules where appropriate and allow for creativity to move in. “Models and data are great tools but where does creativity and play come in for engineers?” In response it was suggested that, if we want effective change, not just argument and resistance, we need to pick switchpoints and find good allies. Projects often need to satisfy multiple objectives or criteria.
Disruption lends itself to good quotations: there was much quoting of philosophers – perhaps the most relevant being from Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
In conclusion
The concept of disruption is being employed more and more regularly in the construction world. Often it is used as an alternative to, or in conjunction with, the word ‘innovation”. And as with innovation, disruption can be both the method and the result. Our panel gave us four different perspectives which embraced both these meanings: from disrupting our view of ourselves and our relationship with nature to an AI intervention that processes the disruptive risk inherent in complex projects. There seems little doubt that disruption is here to stay: our ability to engineer alongside it needs refining, but our discussion shows that it walks hand in hand with the creative process and, if managed well, the outcomes can be positive