Buro Happold Research Articles

The New Model Building: piloting post-Grenfell holistic design of medium-rise residential buildings in timber

In this article, Jonathan Roynon and Matt Caldwell, from Buro Happold, highlight the key points for structural engineers to learn and implement from the New Model Building Guide.

The Future Belongs to Those Who Can Make it a Reality

The article is devoted to the specifics of modern museums, positioning themselves as museums of the future. The author analyses this new format in the world of museums. The Museum of the Future in Dubai, created by Sean Killa with the participation of Killa Design, Buro Happold and Mattar ben Lahej, serves as an example. The author notes a particular interest in the construction of museums around the world. This arises from the unique purpose of such objects - their ability to become a symbol of the city and, in a certain sense, create its positive image in the public mind. Such prominent architects as Zaha Hadid, Peter Schweger, Aldo Rossi, Hans Hollein, Axel Schultes, Shigeru Ban and others paid attention to the construction of museums. Considering several relatively new museum buildings, the author identifies some general trends, among which, first of all, are the expressiveness of architectural images and a change in the museum concept. As a rule, there are no works of art in the museum of the future. The author believes that this is perhaps the most shocking moment experienced by those visitors who were hoping for a meeting with the classics or contemporary art. The traditional image of the temple of the muses and the national treasury has been replaced by a new museum, in which the priority is given to meeting with the event. Now the museum is a place of educational programs, an opportunity to test one’s creative abilities. The modern museum, which has chosen the position of interpreting the future, is a kind of intellectual, communicative, public centre with leisure services.

Design and Construction of the Lille Langebro, Copenhagen

AbstractThe Lille Langebro is the latest movable bridge to be built across the harbour in Copenhagen. Its design was the subject of an international competition commissioned in 2014 by the client, Realdania, and won by a collaboration of Buro Happold, Wilkinson Eyre and Eadon Consulting. The bridge has an overall length of 160m and carries pedestrians and cyclists over a 7m wide deck. The superstructure is steel comprising main longitudinal members that are triangular in cross section along each edge. The geometry is complex with plan curvature and an undulating profile, resulting in an interesting form that results in double curvature of the steel plates.The bridge has two sections that swing to allow shipping through a 35m wide navigation channel. In order to maintain a slender profile in elevation, an innovative moment connection has been designed to connect the moving parts together at midspan. This connection clamps the sections together but is released to allow longitudinal movements arising from temperature.The four bridge sections were entirely prefabricated, being assembled upside down in the workshop and then turned over. They were then delivered to site by sea for erection on site using a large capacity shear leg crane.

Viewpoint. Racing to zero: isn't it time you committed to emission reduction targets?

Buro Happold and WSP UK have committed to reducing the carbon emissions of their designs by 50% by 2030. In this article, Sarah Prichard and David Leversha set out the rationale for this target, explain how they plan to achieve this, and encourage other firms to join them in setting an ambitious agenda for governments to follow as we approach the COP26 climate summit.

Rethinking Complexity: Vladimir Shukhov’s Steel Lattice Structures

This paper is a critical review on advantages and disadvantages of contemporary digital architecture, in retrospect to Vladimir Shukhov's design techniques, applied in the early 20th century. After investigating Shukhov's structural systems, this paper explores the relationship between performance and form, questioning the necessity of high-complexity structures. It will present unpublished archive material of his early work and stimulate a valuable discussion by comparing it with contemporary projects designed by renowned architects. The study on Shukhov focuses on his tessellation method of double-curved surfaces using simple standardized elements. The study of present digital approaches revolves around leading architects using computational tools (e.g. Foster and Partners, Buro Happold and Arup), who have materialized high complexity structures composed by irregular units. Our findings highlight advantages and disadvantages of contemporary computational approaches.

Urbanisation in the UK: the need for a more focused approach on city infrastructure

In the first article from the Institution of Civil Engineers’ thought leadership programme, Andrew Comer of Buro Happold and ICE policy manager Kelly Forbes review urbanisation in the UK. They conclude British cities need a more flexible and tailored approach to their infrastructure provision.

Computational wind engineering of large umbrella structures

The sensitivity of membrane structures to transient wind loads becomes severe at wide spans and low pre-stress levels of the membrane. At stationary wind loads, the elastic behaviour of the flexible membrane leads to deformations with an associated change of the flow conditions and wind pressure distributions. This effect can be enhanced by time dependant fluid fluctuations such as atmospheric or building induced turbulences. Common methods in wind engineering practise like small scale wind tunnel experiments do not fully cover non-linear structural behaviour, contact interaction between membrane and structural elements and the interaction of the flow field with the structural response. Therefore numerical tools are used for the structural design of lightweight membranes. This paper presents results of the first industrial application of the fully coupled fluid structure interaction simulation for aerodynamically sensitive membrane structures situated in a built environment. The dynamic behaviour for gust induced wind loads has been investigated and reaction forces were determined. The application of the fully computational wind engineering method, in time domain, allowing as well for non-linear structural effects as for fluid structure interaction effects, makes the discovery of large dynamic amplification factors possible. The described procedure and results were reviewed and approved by Buro Happold, one of the world leading structural engineering offices.

Urban and Architectural Sustainability in the Gulf

What is the impact of rapid urbanisation on sustainable development, such as that experienced by cities in the Gulf? Robert Cooke, an Associate Sustainability Consultant at Buro Happold, based in Dubai, seeks to answer this question. He asks what the real contribution might be of the implementation of recent sustainable policies and urban projects, and what more needs to be done to improve the Gulf's ecological footprint and the water‐energy nexus.

BIM on the Louvre Abu Dhabi

This case study documents Buro Happold's experience with the Louvre Abu Dhabi project over the last six years, and focuses on the 3D modelling and BIM aspects that have been an integral part of the project.

Metasystems of Urban Flow: Buro Happold's Collaborations in the Generation of New Urban Ecologies

AbstractWhen regarded as a whole, the flows of a city – made up of people, water, energy, information, materials and waste – constitute a large and complex ‘metasystem’. Wolf Mangelsdorf, Head of Structural Engineering at Buro Happold, describes a number of projects that Buro Happold has collaborated on with architects, urban planners and landscape architects that mark a significant shift in the design of urban infrastructures, recognising the importance of the metasystems of flow.

Interoperability in Sports Design

AbstractDavid Hines leads the parametric and advanced geometry group at Populous, the global design practice renowned for its expertise in sports facility design. Here he describes how Populous and Buro Happold created a shared model environment for the Aviva Stadium in Dublin (2010) , enabling a smooth parametric‐to‐BIM‐to fabrication process. A watershed initiative, it provided the prerequisite stepping stone for developing a parametric bowl tool for designing stadia.

Simulating the User Experience: Design Optimisation for Visitor Comfort

AbstractMuch emphasis in computation has been put on the potential of building information modelling (BIM) and other software in the coordination of the design and construction process and on building performance. What, however, can modelling techniques offer to shift the focus to simulating the user experience? Shrikant Sharma and Al Fisher of Buro Happold SMART Solutions, which offers specialist computational innovation services to external clients, describe how their team has developed SMART Move, a crowd‐modelling software that has been used in the development of the designs for Wilkinson Eyre's Exeter University Forum and Foster + Partners' Thomas Deacon Academy.

Engineering Integration: Real‐Time Approaches to Performative Computational Design

AbstractParametric techniques herald an age of predictive design. Results from simulations, analytical data and design performance criteria directly influence or drive architecture. However, this is still a relatively passive design approach: parameters go in, design comes out. Al Fisher explains the work of Buro Happold's SMART Solutions team on developing real‐time simulations where the analysis is persistent within the model. Lightweight, mobile versions of tools traditionally reserved for detailed analysis can form the early conceptual stages of design. Interactive models can be tweaked and manipulated, with the live feedback of results providing a link to the materiality of the design. Through a responsive approach, hybrid design can be achieved that blends performance with design intent. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Structuring Strategies for Complex Geometries

AbstractOver the last couple of decades, computation has proved a great facilitator for design, allowing far greater scope for analysis and generative design. Intelligent engineering, though, can only be truly set apart by the pursuit of the right design strategy, as outlined here by Wolf Mangelsdorf of Buro Happold. Mangelsdorf highlights four different models that enable the generation and engineering of geometrically complex forms and describes how they have been applied by Buro Happold in four very diverse projects with different architect collaborators. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Program schools engineering graduates in the Buro Happold way

PurposeDescribes an award‐winning graduate‐training program that helped a fast‐growing engineering consultancy to expand its national and international operations while retaining the close knowledge of local markets that is more typical of a small business.Design/methodology/approachExplains the background to Buro Happold's graduate program, the form it takes and the results it has achieved.FindingsDescribes how the graduates the consultancy recruits tend to be from specific disciplines, and the graduate program helps to ensure that they become aware of how they fit into, and can work with, other disciplines in the company.Practical implicationsReveals that Buro Happold's graduates tend to stay with the company: three‐quarters of the graduates it recruited in 2005 were still with the consultancy two years later.Social implicationsHighlights a successful way of producing the skilled and experienced engineers the country will need in the future.Originality/valueOutlines how Buro Happold nurtures, manages and helps graduates to be able to lead projects and attain key positions in the business in the future.

Tsunami Design Initiative (TDI)

AbstractTDI was formed by Ellen Chen, Eric Ho, Nour Jallad, Rick Lam and Ying Zhou of Harvard University and, with Michelle Addington as consultant, went on to win the Tsunami Challenge Competition in 2005, hosted by the MIT SIGUS group, which called for ideas for rebuilding efforts following the catastrophic tsunami in South Asia in 2004. In order to realise such a large project, the team needed to be expanded and the project was therefore carried out in collaboration with Luis Berrios, Justin Lee and Carlo Ratti (SENSEable City Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Walter Nicolino (carlorattiassociati, Turin, Italy), with Domenico Del Re (Buro Happold, London) as structural engineer. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Briefing: Johannesburg Earth Summit—what next?

Alastair Macnair of Buro Happold considers the influence of the Johannesburg Earth Summit on the built environment.

Digital depth … or featureless surface?

This March, the University of Bath Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering held a conference on the ways that computing can be used to generate architecture and engineering. Sponsored by RIBA Future Studies, Buro Happold and Ove Arup, and bringing together lecturers from a variety of disciplines, it considered both practical and philosophical aspects. A publication is planned, edited by the organizers, Neil Leach, Chris Williams and David Turnbull.

Buro Happold FEDRA first engineering consultancy to achieve ICE Approved Training Agreement status

Buro Happold FEDRA first engineering consultancy to achieve ICE Approved Training Agreement status

Buro Happold wins Queen's Award for Enterprise 2001

Buro Happold wins Queen's Award for Enterprise 2001