HRH visits OPS

This week we hosted a visit from HRH Princess Royal. In her role as Chancellor of the University of London, the Princess visited Marshgate and One Pool Street. The event was led by our friends in the People and Nature Lab. Three things struck me about the visit.

The waiting to talking ratio. Three mins of talking with HRH about the collaboration between Bartlett and GEE on how we apply knowledge of sensing and observing the built and natural environment equated to roughly five hours of prep and standing around waiting. Although this did allow me to recount stories about how whilst working at Arup we once sat with around 200 people for about 4 hours in a really hot marquee in Amman waiting for the King of Jordan to arrive to start an event.

Second, it is a forcing function to get the place looking good. Installing posters providing the backdrop to our work (useful for visitors looking around over the next 12 months!), doing the last 20% push to get physical demos up and running and the Garden Lab looks amazing after a spruce up to help bring it out of its over winter state. So much so that we did a Lidar rescan the following day!

The value of bringing a group of people working in the same building together to create a shared experience of their day to day research. It builds community, gives folk the reason to be talking about their work with each other and creates that opportunity for professional or personal serendipitous connection. But most importantly it builds social capital. As Yogi Berra points out: ‘If you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t go to yours’.

Links to other posts from the day:

Commemorative plaque created by Lucy in Institute of Making.