When you walk into the Brown Design Workshop (the BDW), there is a soccer ball with an image of a man’s face taped to it. He wears a wonky not-quite smile and black-rimmed glasses, and even on a crumpled piece of printer paper, you can see the sparkle in his blue eyes. In the School of Engineering, Chris Bull is a name many have often heard, but not a person that many have actually seen. Even as his student advising partner, he’ll often vanish before my very own eyes.
The Brown Design Workshop was born in 2013, out of a desire for a student-led makerspace “which aims to make the practices of design and creation more collaborative, open, flexible, and accessible,” according to the website. In the BDW, anyone can sign up for workshops such as Intro to Woodworking, Laser Cutting, and 3D Printing.
With the help of several others, Chris Bull transformed what was originally storage space for equipment into the BDW, which now employs nearly forty paid student monitors with hours from 2pm to midnight, Monday through Friday. There are many machines in the space, including a laser cutting machine, nine 3D printers, woodworking tools, and at least six different types of saws. There are also classrooms, larger-than-life robots, a Formula SAE race car, and abundant wood, metal, and hardware for building. The BDW is expansive—with ceilings over 20 feet tall and over 10,000 square feet of workspace, you could fit 40-50 school buses in it, theoretically. During the day, students work on projects such as laser-cutting earrings, and others lead tours and group activities. You can build whatever your heart desires in the BDW—whatever your mind can dream—given the time and energy to do so. Chris is there to help.
Chris has nearly always been with Brown, but between his time as an undergraduate at Brown and returning to work at Brown, he spent two years working for an electric motor manufacturer in Massachusetts. When I asked him whether he had been a real engineer, he confirmed: “I had a drafting table.”
John Shilkho, his colleague of twenty-three years, met him in 2000; their first job together was assisting Professor Allan Bower (legendary ENGN0040 professor, recently retired) in his lab. John described Chris as resourceful and incredibly capable of engineering even with limited materials, impressing him from the start. In describing Chris’ role in the BDW John said: “I watched the BDW get developed from the very beginning. This was his baby—he started it and it just blossomed.”
I spoke with a few members of Car Team about Chris. Sophie, a sweet junior from Seattle, said, “He was introduced as the BDW ‘guru’ over ENGN0030 Zoom, and when he turned on his camera there were a bunch of tools behind him. I thought that was cool.”
My freshman fall, I saw a course on the University’s registration website limited to upperclassman enrollment titled, “ENGN0860: Boat Building” taught by Professor Chris Bull, witnessed a 20-foot wood canoe come to life in the BDW, but I never once caught sight of the man himself. Every day, students would come in to work on the boat: hammering, sanding, and staining, working until it stood beautifully gloss-stained and complete. There are videos of the students rowing the finished canoe down the Providence River, but again, no sign of the man who had instructed them.
In the Engineering department, there is also a highly sought-after course taught in the BDW titled ENGN0260: Mechanical Technologies, “Mech Tech” for short. In this coveted class, students learn how to build items such as a screwdriver from raw material (wood, rubber, metal) using a lathe and a blowtorch, among other machines. Chris Bull is listed as the professor of this course, but a week before classes begin, students receive an email stating that Michael Packer is the real instructor—Chris is simply the figurehead.
My friend Jenya once described Chris as having “acid eyes,” eyes that seem to know something about you that perhaps you yourself don’t know. Often he’ll pause, slowly nodding his head, before thoughtfully responding to the question a student has thrown at him. He has a way of making people reflect on what’s just come out of their mouth without being at all condescending; he’s the only person I’ve ever met to combine these two qualities.
I spent some time on a Thursday shadowing Chris Bull: I walked into his office and found him standing as he was eating a colorful bowl of rice medley and seemingly surveying his wall. I remarked that his office seemed like organized chaos; he paused before replying, “The mess… it oscillates.” There is a collection of things on Chris’s walls, including a traditional Korean mask, a colorful beaded turkey on an Indian straw mat, and a hanging sculpture apparently made of wood and other natural materials. These are gifts from graduate students who received help from him during their time at Brown. On his office door, there is a sign that reads, “The Machine Whisperer.”
We spoke briefly outside his office, and I told him, “You have pensive eyes. It’s like they’re peering into my soul.”
Chris: “Well, it’s not working”
Me: “But you’re trying (to read my soul).”
Chris: “Isn’t that what all humans do?”
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Sitting in on his Industrial Design class, a joint course between Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design, I watched many creative processes unfold. One group was creating a “light companion”—a routine builder for kids on the autism spectrum. Stacia, a member of the group, told me, “It’s been a challenge…I think Chris like, hates us. It’s just a gut feeling.” She admitted that this was a projection of her feelings about the project. Later, Chris appeared from seemingly nowhere clutching a soldering iron to show Stacie and her partner how to create the electrical connections they would need to light up their device. Stripping a band of LED lights to their copper wires, in just moments colorful lights appeared, eliciting a “Waaaahhh” from the students as Chris watched with a look of confidence on his face.
Upon quizzing students around the engineering department, many tell me that he scares them. But past the gruff exterior, Chris is rather kind. Another group mate told me, “Chris Bull is a wonderful human being and he brightens up my day whenever I see him. He speaks through his eyes.” Chris often wears a grim sort of smile as he looks off into space; when finds something truly funny, he smiles with his teeth showing and he really looks at you.
In 1976, Chris Bull met his wife Marijoan in ENGN0030, the introductory course for Engineering at Brown, a 200+ student course filled with aspiring engineers smelling not-faintly of the leftover angst and self-importance of graduating as valedictorian of their respective high schools. This might be the most impressive thing I’ve come to know about Chris.
Marijoan transferred to a college in Massachusetts after freshman year but Chris, undeterred, would hitchhike the forty-mile car ride to visit her on the weekend, leaving at 1pm every Friday after APMA0330. Three years later, they were married. Their wedding took place on a Saturday, and Brown Commencement was on Sunday. Their ceremony took place in the First Unitarian Church of Providence, on the corner of Benefit and Benevolent next to the freshman dormitory, Keeney Quad. Chris and Marijoan have been married for forty-three years.
When Chris was hit by a car last year while biking in the dark, the force of the impact was enough to send him to the hospital with limited awareness of his surroundings. As a professor of engineering, he chuckled as he said, “In theory, physics works. In practice, it definitely works.” After the accident, he promised his wife he would stop biking in the dark. Nonetheless, you will occasionally see a suited man cycling along the wood-dust-covered blue floor of the BDW on his bike. If you were to watch the whole process, you would see that he is able to clip his bike shoes into the pedals while in his office, press the crash bar of the door, exit the Engineering building, and bike a little over eight miles home without once unclipping them. You might spot Chris meandering through the BDW donning a pair of jeans and a wool green fisherman’s sweater, and seemingly moments later spot a man of the same size and shape in a bike suit gliding away. He’s like Batman, disappearing to his lair.
One day, I came across Chris just outside his office; he had a long scratch on the side of his face—the previous week he’d had a small wound on his forehead. I asked, “Why do you always have injuries on your face?”
He said, “I go into the woods to hike and—”
I cut him off: “There are creatures?”
“No creatures, but sometimes in order to go where you want to go…you need to go where there are no paths.”
The next week, I asked him what his favorite thing about himself was. He opened his mouth, paused, and then laughed, apparently disarmed: “Why would you ask me a question like that?” Poised like a Shakespearean thespian, he finally offered, “I’m good at removing obstacles.”
I once walked into the BDW expecting to find a friend to invite to a mustache-themed party. Instead, I came across Quinn, a lovely blue-eyed sophomore with a soft voice and a gentleness about them despite their height of 6’2”. They’re taking leave next semester, and had just stepped out of a life advice meeting with Chris; they described it as the most interesting and helpful conversation they’d ever had with an adult. I asked Chris about their meeting, to which he simply smiled and said, “I think that’s just going to turn into urban legend.”
Chris is from a small town in Illinois called Morrison, 140 miles west of Chicago. Morrison is a town of 4,000 people surrounded by fields and pastures. From the ages of eight to eighteen, he built tree forts, played in the woods, swam in the creek, and found people to buy beer for him and his friends. He drove on country roads and drank said beer (not at the same time) and went to dances. When he was in high school, he played the bass guitar in a garage band that played mostly pop rock. The group disbanded after a couple years. I asked him whether this disbandment resembled scenes from the song Summer of ‘69 by Bryan Adams: “Me and some guys from school had a band and we tried real hard . . . those were the best days of my life,” to which he responded, “All of the above.”
Chris listens to Johann Bach these days. He now has three sons, two of whom are twins, as well as two grandchildren. He owns five bikes, in varying states of disrepair. He enjoys digital photography—mostly landscapes and portraits. His favorite color is green—forest green(ish)—he says there is a range of acceptable greens. He’s worn many hats throughout the years, but to most students who know him, he is the BDW guru.
Some things stick with you. Maybe it’s the moment your high school sweetheart told you they loved you or maybe it’s that your best friend once wrote a sixteen-page paper on Porta Potties in first grade. I once heard Chris tell a student on the lawn outside the Engineering building, “You have a story to tell.” This has stuck with me. At a school where nearly everyone has experienced some form of imposter syndrome, the presence of Chris is important.
Sole Magazine