James is an award-winning engineer and teacher who has designed landmark buildings and developed innovative teaching that combines practice with learning. He’s written several books for engineers and students making sustainable building a reality; on timber structures, conceptual design, and most recently the future of structural design. 
 
James is committed to making sustainable engineering as accessible as possible, through his writing, lecturing and blogs. 

What prompted your move from engineering design to research and education?  
 
“It wasn’t an overnight move – I’ve been involved in academia for a long time. Three years into working as an engineer I did a PHD and started teaching as part of that. Then in 2015 I made the switch to working in education full-time – feeling that I could have more impact teaching the next generation of engineers. I also felt I had amassed enough examples from my work in engineering companies that I could take into academia.  
 
“Building design is slow to change, and as I’d worked in progressive companies who were quick to embrace BIM (Building Information Modelling) and carbon counting before they were more widely adopted. Students needed to know this stuff – universities tend to teach current practice rather than what students need to be prepared for in the future. We were teaching steel and concrete structural design, with a structural timber design module as an option only. I suggested converting that module to a broader sustainable materials structural design course and embedding timber structural design within it. I’d love universities to be ahead of the curve rather than behind it, so students come out ready for industry. But is industry ready for students?” 
 
So how do we keep those in the industry up to date on design thinking? 
 
“Some of my focus is on industry, as students graduate wanting to change industry, but industry is not always ready for change. I’m heavily involved with the Institute of Structural Engineers (IStructE) who are doing an amazing job trying to lead industry in the circular economy, carbon counting and regenerative design. And they are aware that industry needs resources; books and magazines – not just information, but things like profiles of inspiring designers to show that it is possible, and here are people doing it.  
 
“The Barriers to change are many and multi-faceted. It’s hard to change things, but if you can show examples of it being done, that’s valuable, and gives people confidence to try new things themselves. The worry is people giving up trying because they think it’s impossible.” 
 
What is the key message you want to communicate to students?  
 
“The desire to question, challenge and explore, and a willingness to keep learning. As an example, I was talking to Craig White of Agile Homes, where the difficult bit is not the design, but the finance. So, you could give up, outsource the problem, or you could dig into the finance and learn about it to solve the problem.  
 
“That’s the attitude I’d like my students to have; what’s the problem and what do I need to learn to overcome it? Where issues may be outside your traditional remit but could unlock things by expanding the engineer’s role.  
 
“And to have agency, particularly collectively – engineers play a huge part in the industry, and the influence of designers can be empowering. If my personal carbon footprint is 10 tonnes per year and I’m specifying 10,000 tonnes per year, my work gives me huge opportunities to improve outcomes.” 
 
Your latest book is on regenerative design – so what is regenerative design? 
 
“For me it’s about going beyond ‘do no harm’, and opens up the imaginative possibility of designing differently. To ‘do no harm’ is impossible, and therefore limiting, so it’s about going beyond that into new realms.  
 
  
“What would it look like to make positive concrete that sequestered carbon say; was engaged in communities, was non-polluting, helped economic development, was culturally appropriate, was educational, and stewarded the land the materials were extracted from?  
 
“You’re never going to find out unless you start looking at how all aspects of the supply chain could be positive. In the excitement of exploring the possibilities we might get ourselves closer to where we want to be.  
 
“I realised I’d limited myself to ‘do no harm’ until the lightbulb moment of expanding the possibilities into how we could do good. My book shows inspiring examples and tries to build the ‘imagination infrastructure’ – what roads do we need to build to allow us to investigate.” 
 
What’s the next area you are researching? 
 
“I don’t know but I am taking some time out as I’m moving from the University of Bristol to the University of Bath in September and want space for things to emerge there.  
 
“I’m interested in AI, and in the future of education. I’ve really enjoyed imagining the future through my books and taking a speculative approach.  
 
“I’m also really interested in the intersection between the built environment and faith. Mawra Al-Sabouni is an amazing thinker – a Syrian architect who’s written two books; ‘The battle for home: memoir of a Syrian architect’ and ‘Building for Hope: Towards an Architecture of Belonging’. In her first book she talks about the  challenges she faced as a woman in her role, her hometown of Homs, how its architecture facilitated the civil war, and how integrated cities are more stable whereas segregated communities can lead to conflict. Her second book meanwhile focuses on how her Islamic faith impacts her approach to design, and I was really struck by this. I talk to people in other fields about how faith impacts their work, but don’t hear people talking about this in the built environment in terms of sustainability for instance.   
 
“Ultimately I want to think about how we generate systemic change, whether that’s through industry, community or individually, and it’s probably all of those, so how many buttons can I press!” 

Published by The Green Register, June 2025