So, for the first entry into this redesign diary, I want to talk about a dilemma I face whenever I think about this website: who is it for?

If I consider it to be an advertisement of my skills and abilities, something that can attract potential clients or employers, my design sensibilities take over and I try to produce a minimalistic and professional portfolio. I look to my peers, and revel in the simplicity and focus of their sites, with beautifully presented case studies and perfect prose.

When I think about my own needs, I get excited about implementing IndieWeb technologies and experimenting with new CSS specs. Soon enough, I’m building a one-person social network, full of needless complexity and featuring a stream of unfiltered posts which can appear messy and ill-disciplined.

This dilemma is undoubtedly tinged with hints of imposter syndrome and a general lack of confidence that manifests itself as indecision. I could build and maintain a separate portfolio site, but that’s more trouble than its worth; been there, done that. I need to find a compromise between these two apparently conflicting needs.

Ultimately, I keep coming back to the same resolution: what is a personal website if not a manifestation of a person online? And should a portfolio really sit in opposition to that? As a reasonably open and straight-forward type of person, attempting to accommodate both the professional and personal in the same space may be difficult, but if I’m successful, this site will be the most honest reflection of who I am.

Quite the unnerving experience as I went to open a new carton of Oatly… what the actual fork!?

Reading the small print, it seems like they’re attempting to freak out another Paul. Phew!

“Arm, aber sexy”

Berlin confounds all preconceptions of a German city. Described by its former mayor as “arm, aber sexy” (poor, but sexy), beyond the drab glass and steel of its commercial centre, lies a series of messier, ragtag districts. Nondescript residential apartment blocks, often defaced with graffiti, line up along leafy and cobbled streets interspersed by canals and churches. A visit to Potsdam provided a more conventional scene, although only because many of its historic buildings have been rebuilt over the last decade.

It’s hard to escape the notion that Berlin is still rebuilding too. Areas of land remain barren, some with the remnants of pre-war buildings standing to one side. Someone described the city to me as “post-apocalyptic”, which isn’t far off. The past is ever-present, sometimes as a necessary reminder, occasionally as eye-candy for tourists. That so much of this has been sign-posted over the last thirty years means history feels very contemporary here.

While other parts of Germany were able to restore their industries after the war, Berlin had to wait for reunification before it could find its purpose. Today, Berlin sees itself as a home for new ideas and experimentation, and so found itself a role as the capital of Europe’s burgeoning start-up scene. Various German corporations have small innovation hubs in the city, each hoping to benefit from the energy and ideas of the local community. It also attracts people like me, digital nomads looking for adventure. I heard from plenty of people who had relocated and were looking for work, and luckily for them, plenty of companies are looking to hire, too. But I found little to interest me.

Out of step

This trip was an attempt to find answers, perhaps with a vague notion of stumbling upon the perfect job opportunity that would rescue me from the cataclysm of Brexit. Instead, it confirmed what I already suspected: I’m in the midst of a full-blown career crisis!

At this point I’m doubtful any job could meet my exacting requirements. 15 years in the profession has allowed me to develop a highly specific set of criteria, while freelancing has lavished me the freedom and flexibility I crave.

My career has survived me saying no to a lot of things, but I’m starting to wonder if a lack of curiosity and willingness to experiment with new technologies is starting to catch up with me. ‘Technology’, as currently conceived, just doesn’t appeal to me. I couldn’t care less about AR, AI, VR, voice-driven interfaces or bloody blockchains. Topics that do excite me – sustainability, transport, urban development, infrastructure, travel, history, architecture – tend to involve more tangible things, not bytes stored on a server somewhere in Virginia.

I can’t shake the feeling that the better I understand what drives me, the more out of step I am with everyone else.

Companies want to disrupt and disentangle, whereas I want to repair and galvanise. Organisations want to move fast and break things, whereas I want to move slowly and fix things. The industry has adopted Atwood’s Law – anything that can be written in JavaScript, will be written in Javascript – but I want to work with teams building robust systems founded upon accessible, semantic markup.

If I wished to spend my time writing single-page React apps for morally ambiguous companies, I’d have no shortage of options. Ever the contrarian, I want the opposite.

This might be a somewhat reductionist and over-simplified perspective, and it doesn’t paint the full picture, but I imagine aspects will ring true for others. Not a day passes when I don’t speak to a friend or colleague who isn’t equally as confused or unhappy about the trajectory of their career. Perhaps it’s a symptom of age?

One crisis at a time.

What a treat, to visit such an amazing city during the most colourful time of the year. Wir sehen uns bald wieder, Hamburg!

Fernsehturm Reflexion.

The end result of our attempts to work together efficiently by breaking things down is that the topologies of our workplaces are left with gaps and overlaps.

I love this post, not least because it offers a new perspective on the work we do and provides a model for talking about how different teams can better collaborate with each other. There’s much to agree with in this piece, although I found the following to be especially true:

Recognising the gaps and overlaps is only half the battle. If we apply tools to a people problem, we will only end up moving the problem somewhere else.

Some issues can be solved with better tools or better processes. In most of our workplaces, we tend to reach for tools and processes by default, because they feel easier to implement. But as often as not, it’s not a technology problem. It’s a people problem. And the solution actually involves communication skills, or effective dialogue.

From the director of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and The Big Short, Adam McKay’s latest promises to be both entertaining and informative. Christian Bale is once again unrecognisable as the film’s protagonist, but the supporting cast looks incredible as well. I’m looking forward to this one.

Stood below the immense canopy that covers the apron of Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, our guide starts his tour with a passionate defence of the building’s design: “This is not Nazi architecture, this is modern architecture. Hitler never stepped inside – he hated it”.

Planned before the advent of National Socialism, the design of this airport was influenced by contemporary fashions, including that of the Bauhaus. Yet while the building may lack the neo-classical features favoured by Hitler, it didn’t escape his influence entirely. Between the two ends of its sweeping arc sit thirteen towers. Tempelhof was intended not only be an airport but a stadium, part of a much larger venue within which a million people could celebrate the air supremacy of the Third Reich, and these towers were built to transport thousands of spectators to the roof where tiered seating would provide views over the airfield. But like other parts of the building, many of these towers were never completed. With the onset of war, energies were turned elsewhere.

Inside the terminal’s huge reception hall, we’re told that the building instead began life as a factory, with labourers forced to work 18-hour days building aircraft for the military. Workers were permitted to leave the labour camp outside work hours, but needing to wear badges signifying their ethnicity – Jewish, Polish, Russian, etc. – meant it was often safer to stay put than face being assaulted on the street.

Venturing onwards, we find ourselves below the terminal where several additional floors provide access to over 300 underground bunkers. This was a common feature of buildings designed during the inter-war period: civil defence an important consideration given the size of Germany’s military had been restricted. These bunkers would eventually be used by Berliners hiding from the advancing Red Army seeking retribution: “The Wehrmacht exported the horrors of war, but they returned like a boomerang”. It was in a small, unsanitary bunker like the one we were stood that our guide’s grandparents met: “I wouldn’t be here today giving this tour if it wasn’t for a room like this”.

In 1951, part of the building was given over to commercial air travel. Like elsewhere in Berlin, dividing walls could be found as passengers were not permitted access to areas occupied by the US Air Force. While civilians were checking-in for flights on the lower levels, above them G.I.s might be playing basketball in part of the building originally intended as a ballroom for Hitler and his entourage.

Before returning to the reception hall, we move into a small, unassuming entrance area featuring a low-hung ceiling. Our guide points to a series of thick pillars that line the walls and suggests that they appear out of place given the room’s meagre proportions. Only upon visiting the floor above do these make sense. This entrance was originally a much taller hall, and these pillars reached up to a decorated ceiling 15 meters above (since blackened and damaged during the terminal’s brief Soviet occupation). The floor was added by the Americans in an attempt to denazify the space else “Germans might enter the building and unconsciously raise their hand”.

In the derelict room left above, much of the cladding was removed for use elsewhere in the city. Here the truth behind the building’s imposing and substantial appearance is revealed: the thin limestone slabs were used to hide tangled rebar and rubble. The symbolism wasn’t lost on anyone.

With its complex and chequered past, this is not a building you feel compelled to love, but it’s one I find deeply captivating. As various periods of history and design fiercely collide with each other, to walk just a few meters is find yourself transported from the roaring twenties to the Cold War and back again.

The tour only scratched the surface, our guide admitting to having got lost within the terminal’s labyrinth of over 7000 rooms for almost three hours. Concluding his presentation, he spoke of the city’s resistance to allowing development on the edges of Tempelhofer Feld, especially in those areas where labour camps once stood. “We need monuments, as well as buildings like Tempelhof, to act as reminders – for us and generations that follow – of what was allowed to happen, so that we can avoid making the same mistakes again”. On German Unity Day, this seemed like an especially pertinent statement.

English guided tours of Tempelhof Airport take place every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 1:30pm. Quotes in this post have been paraphrased and are recounted from memory.

Potsdamer Platz.