BIM and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Story-telling is the oldest form of communication – an art form as well as a system of knowledge transfer – which involves social bonding, the art of performance and results in a shared memory which is powerful and rich. Story-telling is also an enjoyable skill that is arguably more familiar to architects than to engineers, perhaps because of the emphasis on critique in education. Unlike design creativity, which to an extent is a natural skill that cannot be taught, the art of story-telling is a skill that can be learned and which has certain key ingredients. This is vitally important at several stages in the life of every project, no matter whether it is a high-profile bridge or an everyday crossing.

In this paper, I want to briefly explore the importance of the art of story-telling as it applies to bridge designers, with the help of my favourite story, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, whose sub-title is “An Inquiry Into Values”. Written in 1974 by Robert Pirsig, this is a tale of a motorcycle road trip, of a father and a son, of philosophy and reality. The road trip is itself a metaphor for life and the experiences of the narrator are used to introduce philosophical themes of Quality and a Sense of Place, which are at the heart of an architectural understanding of bridge design.

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