The Way of the Wobble 
Peter Campbell
- Ove Arup: Masterbuilder of the 20th Century by Peter Jones Buy this book
The meal is over. On the tablecloth there are corks, an orange, a few walnut shells, an empty glass and a coffee spoon. Those of us whose instinct is to see if we can somehow balance these objects, one on the other, are generally found to be annoying. Conversation falters. People wait for over ambitious configurations to collapse. Structural doodling is our way of playing at being engineers. We search for the point of balance as weight is transferred from one item to another. We load a folded card or a drinking straw until it buckles, replicating in miniature tests made with hefty presses and rigs in the basements of engineering schools.
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Peter Campbell is the London Review’s resident designer and art critic.
Other articles by this contributor:
At the V&A · Art Deco
In Regent Street · A Mile of Style
At Tate Britain · British Art and the French Romantics
At the British Museum · Dürer
At the Royal Academy · Edvard Munch’s troubles
At the Royal Academy · From Russia
At the British Museum · Medical Curiosities
At the Saatchi Gallery · The Triumph of Painting
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