Synopsis
The structural engineering profession is fun and brilliantly creative. Look at the list of Institution Gold Medal winners over many years. They have won this highest honour because they are exceptionally creative. Yes, their mathematical skills are undoubtedly excellent too, but without creativity they would not have won such an award. There is an innate creativity-led attraction among children, in particular, in connecting things together, building up a tower, breaking it down, learning from their mistakes, and doing it all again. We are big kids.
The structural intuition we show at the age of 17, just before we embark on our university degrees, is phenomenal. We come armed with knowledge that an intact, doubly-curved eggshell is an inherently strong structure, tents seem very light and efficient when everything is nicely stretched taut, and a tape measure has extraordinary strength and stiffness over a long distance, as simple examples. But do we retain such intuition throughout our formative education? Do we look to creative exploitation of geometry and materials in order to drive through sheer brilliance in structural engineering design? The temptation at university is often to switch off
intuition and to size vertical and horizontal members instead, as though the latter were somehow more grown up.
In this inaugural address, I share my strong belief that we have some way to go yet in our formative educational activities before a hand-in-hand industry–academia link is formed which embeds creativity in our curricula as a key learning outcome. I believe that it is essential that the education of structural engineers centres on creativity, innate intuition and appropriate exploitation of materials right from Day 1 of a degree programme. The Institution plays a critical role in nurturing the abilities of our students and graduates in a collaborative and creative setting, and my address sets out how we might build still further on this.