Making a Plan

At the next project group meeting, the architects brought some sample brain waves, taken straight from websites. That was the obvious next step, pragmatic and sensible. But weren’t we missing a major opportunity? Images of brain waves in popular culture or textbooks are usually stylised and miss important biological details. Furthermore, we had some of the world’s greatest experts in recording human brain signals in our department.

Why not record real brain waves and use state-of-the-art tools to analyse and depict them? The creation would double as a wonderful scientific time stamp, marking how far our methods in human neuroscience had reached when the building was completed. If our science, as it should, continues to advance at its breathtaking pace, the façade would be dated, and this would be a feature rather than a bug.

Some of the project team derided the idea as preposterous or, at least, impractical. We were in the depths of the pandemic. How could we possibly pull this off, and in the short time required? I promised the team that we would deliver.