Brian Wiesner

I am a massive advocate of ensuring you have some peaceful time alone. After all, I’m a devoted introvert . I love time alone to think. I love long walks where I can muse on ideas and let thoughts churn and mature. But, experiencing something as a group isn’t about thinking.

This is about belonging - it goes to the core of what it is to be human.

Of... See more

More important than beanbags and coffee machines (though they are nice), are how employers recognise the needs for work-life balance, the importance of time for child-rearing and family life, and the ability of workers to easily move between the spaces of their lives. Employers should be asking how they fit into the ecology of everyday rhythms of... See more

“The American dream was Every man gets his castle ,” Todd Gannon, the head of architecture at Ohio State University's Knowlton School, told me. Above all else, the suburban life is one of independence, a self-contained homestead where the American family can realize its desire and potential, unperturbed by others. Even the family car gets its own... See more

Like the impressionists, we see a magical sense of ambiance in cities that never sleep; places where we don’t have to pick between living as morning larks or night owls, a place where dawn-to-dusk and dusk-to-dawn can flourish simultaneously and cross pollinate; where the vice of darkness and virtue of mornings can be experienced in equal amounts.

Life is nothing more than a series of stages, one after another. Our problem is that we often enjoy a particular stage so much that we’re hesitant to move to the next one. Each chapter should be enjoyable, yes, but each chapter should also prepare you for a new chapter that you could only reach by experiencing your current one . And you do, at some... See more

When we sing in the shower, we hardly expect applause. In fact, that would be awfully weird.

But online, when just about anyone might be clicking, watching or sharing, it’s disappointing to put your work into the world and hear nothing.

Nothing but a black hole that absorbs your best work and reflects nothing back.

And if that happens again and again,... See more

“A Spaniard’s social agility is superior to their fierce feelings of personal independence.” Giles Tremlett, Ghosts of Spain.

Instead it is an argument to get to work building that kind of social trust in as many places as possible, because we’re going to need it. We’ve come through 75 years where having neighbors was essentially optional: if you had a credit card, you could get everything you needed to survive dropped off at your front door. But the next 75 years aren’t... See more