Taking stuff for granted

I was standing at Whitecraigs station the other day and caught myself staring at the old woodwork. The building is lovely, really old and carefully made. Still there, still doing its job. Something clicked that the people who originally built it aren’t around anymore.

But their work is.

My mind spiralled a bit. Almost everything around me in the urban world is man-made, or at least thought up by someone at some point. Not just the obvious stuff, but all the background details I don’t really notice anymore. The core building blocks of the urban world.

Metal, bolts, wires, concrete.

Stones that look natural but were crushed and shaped with tools.

Drain covers, drainage, electrics.

Curbs, bricks, clocks, seating, signs.

Braille slabs for a11y.

Glass, hinges, cut wood, lighting.

Stairs, because at some point humans decided how we move between levels.

Running water, pipes, toilets, doors.

Bridges, rubber-wrapped wiring, traffic cones.

All of it exists because someone was solving a very specific problem.

None of this came from nowhere.

Nothing I build is out of thin air either. It’s always sitting on foundations laid by people before me, and before them again pr built on frameworks conceptualised by others. Ideas stacked on ideas until things just feel normal.