Episode description

The artist Ai Weiwei has always enjoyed ignoring the boundaries between disciplines, fusing art, architecture, design, collecting and social activism. He’s now taken over the Design Museum in London (from 7th April – 30th July 2023), filling it with his work and collections - from millions of handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds to Lego pieces and broken teapot spouts dating back to the Song Dynasty. The exhibition, Making Sense, explores what we value - from what we perceive to be precious or worthless, to the tensions between the past and present, as well as work made by hand and machine.

The engineer Roma Agrawal invites readers to marvel at the design of many of the small but perfectly formed inventions that have changed the world. In Nuts & Bolts she deconstructs complex feats of engineering to focus on the nail, spring, wheel, lens, magnet, string and pump.

The economist Bent Flyvbjerg is also interested in deconstructing things, but he's focused on ambitious multi-million pound projects to find out why the vast majority are significantly over-budget and past their deadline. In How Big Things Get Done he extolls the virtue of 'thinking slow, acting fast', and how megaprojects that are designed with Lego-building in mind are more likely to succeed.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image credit: close up of Monet's Water Lilies in Lego, constructed by Ai Wei Wei - photo copyright by Ela Bialkowska OKNO Studio