Helping young engineers pursue small projects with big ideas

摘要

Louis Kahn, one of the geniuses of mid-twentieth century architecture, said, 'If you ask a brick what it wants to be, it would say, an arch.' Karl Popper, meanwhile, grounded his famous 'small-is-beautiful' dictum in another equally decisive declaration, 'All life is problem-solving.' The raison d'etre of the Insitution of Civil Engineers (ICE)-Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) McAslan Bursary draws from these two simple but energising ideas. Small-scale projects, developed and carried through by young engineers, architects and designers, can have remarkable potency. All of the 150-plus projects supported by the bursary fund in the last three years have been like Kahn's bricks: they may be relatively simple, but they add something to the lives of people and places by addressing specific needs in challenging surroundings in Britain and overseas. They also represent a desire to promote collaboration, and do so at an early stage in the careers of engineers and architects.