Brian Eno's 10 Design Principles for the Street

23 May 2022

In 2021, Dan Hill coordinate the Designing Missions book, inviting responses from scholars, artists, and thinkers to rethink design principles for missions and impact. Among the invited thinkers was Brian Eno.

As Dan Hill writes,

"(For those that don’t know Eno’s work, he is one of the most important and influential artists, musicians and thinkers of the last half-century. And regarding my opening paragraphs and this desire to pull in culture, it’s worth noting that Brian has also—perhaps implicitly— pursued a sharper, more inventive and informed approach to tech than most, as music often describes the potential of an interplay of technology and culture, just as cities are the product of culture, nature and tech.)"

These principles add pressure on designers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs to think through what they want projects to do, to hide, to enable, to connect. Design is a powerful tool, and Eno's principles give a unique roadmap to imagining new cities.

Think like a gardener, not an architect: design beginnings, not endings. 

Unfinished = fertile 

Artists are to cities what worms are to soil. 

A city’s waste should be on public display. 

Make places that are easy for people to change and adapt (wood and plaster, as opposed to steel and concrete). 

Places which accommodate the very young and the very old are loved by everybody else too. 

Low rent = high life 

Make places for people to look at each other, to show off to each other. 

Shared public space is the crucible of community. 

A really smart city is the one that harnesses the intelligence and creativity of its inhabitants.