Y magazine issue 2

Y MAGAZINE: FINDING THE ANSWERS Features, interviews and ideas from Buro Happold Issue Two

Y MAGAZINE: FINDING THE ANSWERS The magazine of Buro Happold

Foreword

Cover image: Explorer and author Sir Ranulph Fiennes by Chris Winter

Y MAGAZINE: FINDING THE ANSWERS The magazine of Buro Happold

Never ever play to your stereotype What image do you conjure up in your mind if we say the word ‘engineer’ to you?

Stereotypical responses cover anything from a backroom geek or hands-on practitioner, to dashing larger than life orchestrators of the great leaps in national infrastructure of history past.

Many great engineering interventions have shaped the world but one thing has defined them all – the single-minded determination of an individual and their charismatic ability to influence.

But times have changed.

As the world becomes more complicated so the discipline of engineering becomes broader, conversely skills and technical knowledge deepen and narrow. Specialisation is a necessity, but specialising in isolation can mean an understanding of the ‘bigger picture’ is lost. Many of the big issues the world faces, in part, can be solved by the engineer, but only if such interventions integrate across a host of different skills.

This second edition of Y seeks to explore some of the big themes and give an insight into where we draw inspiration from and how we converse with a wide and diverse group of people, to broaden our minds and ultimately influence better solutions.

We discuss managing the world’s precious water resources (page 8–11), Sir Ranulph Fiennes OBE talks about how he has witnessed climate change across six decades of exploration (page 20–23), Patrick Woodroffe shines a light on his career (page 34–39) and Kate Ascher shows that small interventions can have a big impact (page 44–47).

So leave the stereotypes here at page 3 and find out who we really are, what we are interested in and why we are passionate about great engineering.

Buro Happold

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TAMING COMPLEX PROBLEMS 6 A WORLD WITHOUT WATER… 8 URBAN RENEWAL 12 A STATE OF REINVENTION 16 SIR RANULPH FIENNES 20 ARE YOU A MAKER? 24 USER REVIEW: LIBRARY OF LIVERPOOL 26 THE BIG PICTURE: PURE TENSION 30

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PHOENIX FROM THE FLAMES 32 A TOUCH OF BRILLIANCE 34

BY INVITATION ONLY 40 ENGINEERING RESILIENCE 44 THE BIG PICTURE: XIQU CENTRE, HONG KONG 48 THE ITALIAN JOB 50 CONTACTS 54

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TAMING COMPLEX PROBLEMS CONSIDERED, ELEGANT AND MEANINGFUL INTERVENTIONS PAUL WESTBURY TELLS US HOW ENGINEERS ARE HARD-WIRED TO FEEL THEIR WAY, DRIVING SIMPLICITY FROM COMPLEXITY. There is something of a calling for those of us who work in engineering, of wanting to make things better, not just for our clients but also for society. This is a big deal for Buro Happold and is part of the very essence of our firm. With it comes a curiosity about how things work, a strong desire to improve, and a core belief that we have something important to contribute.

For a society surrounded by ever increasing complexity we are sure that these are valuable attitudes and our desire to first understand and to then elegantly manage complexity is perhaps the very thing that drives us forward and excites us.

But a key point about complexity is that it applies to systems, a series of elements that have a relationship with each other, with interdependencies that drive unique characteristics.

Complexity as a concept can be regarded as the difficulty that the conscious part of the human mind has in understanding all of this, although I’m told that our unconscious mind deals with complexity really rather well but unfortunately only serves up its answers as intuition.

Views of the mind have changed, as David Brooks, author of The Social Animal, reminds us; ‘The unconscious parts of the mind are not primitive vestiges that need to be conquered in order to make wise decisions… Instead, the unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind – where most of the decisions and many of the most impressive acts of thinking take place’.

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Taming complex problems

While this works on an animal level, it is not so useful when it comes to working with others, where we have to use the conscious parts of our brains, and decisions need some evidence base and simplicity has tremendous value. This is a challenge we have always had to deal with and one that is becoming increasingly difficult as things become more connected. But this is the working lot of the engineer and as such we think we have something more to contribute to society both in and beyond what we already do for our buildings and cities.

The nineteenth century American physician Oliver Wendell Holmes talked elegantly about complexity giving way to simplicity but that it was a process you had to move through; “I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity”. This is what we as engineers do; we ‘feel our way forward with our fingertips’ using what the Germans call Fingerspitzengefühl, assessing myriad elements that are viewed to have a relationship with each other, as if in a system, concentrating on some and rejecting others until we have simplicity and we can go forward.

This approach has a much wider currency than physical or environmental forces and it works for policy and human interaction as well. A wonderful example is the largely inaccessible organisational diagram that the American military produced in 2010 to explain the counter-insurgency problems

they faced in Afghanistan. What they thought was a triumph of mapping a multitude of factors and their inter relationships, backfired with the media accusing them of being confused by their own processes and failing spectacularly to offer any simple insights. Enter the engineer Eric Berlow (actually a biologist) who transformed the map into a systems model, focused on the paramount objective, followed the connections, allowed three degrees of separation and removed all other “noise”. Suddenly the American military plan became very simple: in order to provide increased popular support for the Afghan Government you need (a) Active engagement with ethnic rivalries and religious beliefs; and (b) Fair, transparent economic development and provision of services. Why couldn’t the original authors have said that in the first place?

The point is not that engineers (or Berlow) have all the answers, or that we could do this on our own, it is that we are used to solving complex problems, by working with dozens of different disciplines, integrating each insight, branch of knowledge and area of expertise and feeling our way forward with our fingertips to find elegant and simple solutions. It is the sum of the parts that fashions simplicity out of complexity and so integration is key. Understanding systems and then presenting simple insights is exactly what engineers do. When faced with any problem, we look to first embrace the inherent complexity in all of its hairy, tricky but wonderful detail. We don’t fear it and we are not overwhelmed by the process of gathering it. By fully immersing ourselves in it we feel our way through it, and

when we emerge with an understanding of the relationships within the system then the complexity has in effect been simplified. Not by rushing in and forcing a quick response, but by considering the whole and making elegant and meaningful interventions.

You won’t be surprised to hear me say this, but there is something special about engineers. We do see the world as systems, we are battle-hardened to complexity, we want to do good, we want to investigate and we know how to feel our way to elegant solutions. Taken together this works as an amazing armature with which to tackle some of our most intractable challenges and we are all tremendously excited about the opportunity that we have to do exactly that.

Paul Westbury paul.westbury@burohappold.com

Taming complex problems

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A world without water…

The need for communities to live near a water source has been fundamental for the human race; providing everything from sustenance to industry. With the world’s population continuing to grow and the world’s water quality continuing to dwindle, managing these vital water resources in a sustainable way has become crucial to both growth and survival. The steps needed to conserve the world’s water supply are complex; requiring development and restoration across numerous differing environments and climates, from inner city waterways to remote coastlines.

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A world without water…

Human behaviour and misunderstanding of how to manage and maintain resources can impact significantly on water supplies. Now 70-80% used for human purposes, the 251km Jordan river, which runs through Israel, Jordan and Syria before flowing into the Dead Sea, has been the subject of decades of disputes over access to its waters, with multiple dams and channels being added along its path. As a result the water flow has been greatly diminished from 1.3 billion cubic meters per year to just 20-30 million, with some areas reduced to salt flats as a result of the Dead Sea level falling by as much

Image: Asaf Eliason

“[The River Jordan’s] water flow has been greatly diminished from 1.3 billion cubic meters per year to just 20-30 million”

as 1m per year. Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) have named the river as one of the world’s most endangered ecological sites, and have been campaigning for action to save it for the last ten years. Following both this campaign and extensive research into the problems the river faces, steps are now being taken to rejuvenate the flow of the river and replace valuable resource taken from it. The river is a key example of how measures are needed to ensure sustainable management of watersheds for future generations.

A world without water…

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“Riyadh’s water consumption is expected to increase from 1.3 million cubic metres per day to 3 million by 2021”

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While not plagued with the same political issues as the Jordan river, Wadi Hanifah is an example of how a ‘river’ can be rejuvenated for the benefit of the increasing population as well as the environment and ecology that rely on the water that it brings. Running 120km through Saudi Arabia’s capital city Riyadh, the wadi had become polluted from overuse and from the sewage that flowed into it from the city, destroying both its water quality and its environment for wildlife. Like many of the world’s cities, the population of Riyadh is set to double in the next two decades; increasing the need for usable water and public space.

meet a third of the city’s demands. The treated water can then be reused for agriculture, irrigation and non-potable uses.” Utilising natural methods to improve the water quality of the wadi was an essential element of the solution to the issues it faced. “A natural, bioremediation treatment process has been installed to treat the water, which basically removes pollution, harmful coliforms and nutrients, and makes the water safe for people to enjoy in parkland settings.” Travers explains.

The bioremediation facility now produces fish at the end of its food chain and the wadi is abundant with plants and wildlife.

George Stockton of Moriyama & Teshima Architects describes the wadi as being “Riyadh’s dump and its sewer” before the work to restore it began. Buro Happold’s Alan Travers, director of the firm’s water group, explains the challenges the team needed to address: “Riyadh’s water consumption is expected to increase from 1.3 million cubic metres per day to 3 million by 2021. A key part of the project is to provide the potential for recycling one million cubic metres of water by this point, to

While only part way through its planned restoration, Wadi Hanifah is already providing the city with noticeable improvements, both practically in the quality of the water it offers, and to the community as a whole, as its banks are now a desirable leisure destination. “After decades of neglect we are now seeing the transformation of Wadi Hanifah as a naturalised park system…this is the first step in a very long process of people making Wadi Hanifah theirs again.” Stockton concludes.

A world without water

While the issues surrounding both the availability of water and its quality are vast and widespread, the work done on these projects demonstrates it is possible to both successfully rejuvenate previously degraded water courses and even remodel entire coastlines in order to improve the quality of life for communities, while using methods that are not dependant on costly, invasive heavy engineering systems. The future of the world’s water security requires intuitive and thoughtful design that can enable nature to work with itself once more.

Alan Travers alan.travers@burohappold.com

Image: La’ala Al Kuwait Real Estate Company

Rather than fighting against nature, working with it has proved to be the most successful way of developing new coastal communities.

The Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City development in Kuwait will see over 180km of new beachfront developed over a 25 year period, achieved by extending the shoreline up to 5km inland through a network of waterways which utilise the power of the Arabian Gulf tides. Installing heavy infrastructure would be both intrusive and expensive, so the engineering solution is to make subtle

adjustments to the shape of each of the new channels; installing new tidal gates and throttles to create a water system that allows the water to be adequately flushed using the power of the tide: no pumps, no extra energy resources. The project demonstrates how the population can use water to its advantage and achieve high water quality.

Conversely, while there was little marine life in the original water inlets, the new channels are now home to a developing marine ecosystem, including five previously undiscovered species.

Image: ADA

Alongside the need to manage existing inland waterways, the need to address the world’s changing coastlines as well as create new and vibrant communities is also becoming increasingly apparent. Climate change means that sea levels are expected to rise to 0.5-1m over the next century, and that storms will become more frequent and intense, resulting in challenging conditions for communities living near the coast.

Researchers working for the Earth Institute at Columbia University estimate “the number of people living within 60 miles of a coastline is expected to increase by 35% over 1995 population levels, exposing 2.75 billion people worldwide to the effects of sea level rise and other coastal threats posed by global warming.”

Scan for more info on Buro Happold’s work on Wadi Hanifah.

A world without water…

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Dr Philipp Bouteiller Florian Lennert

Paul Rogers

Urban Renewal: in the end it's all about the human scale

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Urban Renewal: in the end it's all about the human scale

Berlin is a city known for its diverse architecture, contemporary arts and high quality of living. Despite its turbulent history the city has always been very forward thinking; constantly redefining and renewing itself. Billed as the next dynamic industrial development in the city, Berlin TXL will be located on the still operational Tegel Airport site, just minutes from the city centre.

Y asked Florian Lennert, Director, Intelligent City, at InnoZ, innovators in mobility research, to tease out the thoughts of Dr Philipp Bouteiller, Director of Berlin TXL and Paul Rogers, Managing Director of Buro Happold’s Central Europe region about urban renewal and how the city of Berlin has adapted.

FL: What is a smart city? Berlin is doing so well at it but we are not talking about it and it is absent from the global smart cities debate. Could Berlin act as a leitmotif for smart cities?

PB: Berlin does have the potential to take a leading role in the current discussion. But before we look into the future and discuss Berlin’s smart city potential, we have to look at the past.

Berlin’s great decades of city planning were in the late 19th and early 20th century – this was when the distinct character of Berlin was created as we know it today. Berlin is also known to be a city in constant change. I was a student in Berlin when the wall came down in 1989. What happened over the following 20 years was exceptional. Not only was the whole centre to be rebuilt, but all major infrastructures had been artificially split for 45 years. Reuniting them was a major task and we are still working on the upgrade. And since we are so focussed on getting our infrastructures right again, no-one has thought about using this as part of a smart city strategy. We just consider it good engineering. Perhaps, this is one explanation why smart cities is not at the top of the agenda for Berlin, yet.

FL: Berlin’s real growth period was much later than Paris or London. But the real birth of cosmopolitan and metropolitan Berlin was electrification. AEG and Siemens helped to shape the city: At the same time of electrification there was also a desire to create a romantic notion of a 19th century city – as a result, you get these overlaid infrastructures like Viktoria-Luise-Platz which looks as if it’s an ancient square but it was created to accommodate an underground station. So there was a weird moment in the late 19th and early 20th century when Berlin was inventing some of the most modern transport infrastructure but was at the same time stuck in the 19th century planning ideal.

PR: Germany combines those ideals really well. My first trip was in 1992, then we moved here two years later, and for eight

or nine years we watched big infrastructure being built but it wasn’t apparent to me until the last five or six years that this was because somebody took those decisions. Without that infrastructure the city in the future couldn’t exist. They made that decision and investment quite quickly and enabled the Potsdamer Platz phenomenon. Another example is Europacity where infrastructure is enabling development around Hauptbahnhof, it is visionary stuff. There are so many cities that are now having to do this retrospectively, for example we are building a metro into Riyadh, as you can imagine the challenges are far greater working around new development. Germany does it up front.

FL: How Berlin deals with city development and viscosity is also an interesting topic and is a unique challenge.

PB: Take a look at Tegel: it’s nearly five percent of the size of Paris and five times the size of the old city of Lübeck – that’s fairly large, even by Berlin standards. What the administration did to initiate the planning process was pretty smart. Firstly, they went for intensive public participation – there was no preconceived plan of what to do with it. Ideas emerged, were discussed and then refined until they were acceptable to all major stakeholders. Secondly, they had to develop a planning perspective: Six international planning offices were invited to look at the developed proposal from different angles – green, urban, traffic, wild card, etc. Over a period of almost two years, together with the city planning administration they developed the final masterplan. As a result, all six offices accepted it. Thus, the foundations of the project are based on broad consensus in a way I haven’t seen before in Germany.

PR: Public engagement is fascinating – I never experienced it until I came to Berlin. At Tegel there was real interest from the public in urban planning. They simply care about where they live and want to be consulted.

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Dr Philipp Bouteiller (PB) Philipp is the CEO of Tegel Project GmbH. Since 2002 Philipp has been an IT entrepreneur and strategy consultant. After several years with McKinsey he became especially committed to the application of innovative projects in technology based growth markets. Philipp now leads the transformation of the former Tegel Airport, bringing a dense network of university, research institutes and industry together in one place to create solutions for the city of tomorrow.

FL: Using London as an example – is there a different approach to managing the planning process? The mayor of London doesn’t have control over some of the decisions, is that what is shaping some of the planning processes in London or is it a cultural thing?

PR: You had your six planning teams for Tegel who traded a vision. Did they bring subjective ideas to the table or was there some strategic analysis behind it, for example what will work for the future of Berlin? So is it based on strategic analysis or is it based on a good hunch and public commitment?

PR: I really don’t know, I see great examples and poor examples elsewhere. When I look at Buro Happold’s work on the Olympics and the reuse of the Lower Lea Valley, turning that into a planning application and then into an Olympic Park and then the legacy – that is a first class, best practice piece of planning.

But Berlin seems to be engaged at all levels, whether it be federal or city level – the intellectual debate around planning is far greater here.

PB: The answer is both. The process went in parallel. One was about the intellectual and analytical foundation and the other was the visionary part with public engagement. In the end bringing it together is a function of smart arbitration.

PB: I would agree with that.

PR: As a member of the public you can always enter into the debate. Communication is key – you can talk beyond the public or with the public, and a lot of what Berlin did and does is engagement with the public.

PB: Did the public get engaged with the Olympics?

PR: I’m not sure, but I sense that planning is not as involved in the UK. It happens somewhere – in offices – but I don’t think there is a debate. However by being overly democratic does that dilute the solution and is there a risk you get caught up in a quagmire that doesn’t allow progress?

PB: I think you have to differentiate the stages. At Tegel the first public consultation was around defining a vision for the place, so what do we as Berliners want? Should it be about living, or industry and jobs? Once you’ve defined the vision and created the masterplan, you need a strong leadership behind it and professional project management and that must be very rigid. At this stage too much public involvement would make it impossible to proceed within given budget and time constraints. However, at Tegel, it is possible to proceed that way because there is general agreement on the vision: the majority of the citizens are convinced that we are doing the right thing.

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PR: Being the only non-German here it underlines perfectly for me that Germany is future proofing urban renewal into research, manufacturing and technology, which provides a commercial platform for people to live. That leads us into exactly what Germany has done with its energy policy, so that it has a very strong renewable industry and energy policy that is future proofed. The rest of the world is running after fracking technology. Germany is not – it is de-nuclearising.

That approach is shaping our cities because they will be low emission, electrified, enable quality urban life, people will have good jobs, we will be exporting to the world. Germany seems to get it right in all respects.

FL: I think the jury is out on that! The decision not to go nuclear was the final point of a switch over in German leadership and policy to stick with old industry or to take our skills and move them into a new industrial application.

PB: There has been enormous progress in IT. We are now able to make infrastructures more intelligent. Advances in IT, regulation and environmental policy are all coming together nicely. But the advances are so rapid now, that today’s planning won’t be state of the art in five years time. So how do we respond? At Tegel we took the stance of planning the whole project holistically. But we are building in phases of no more than five years, so we can continually learn and then – and only then – we can prepare for the next five years to make sure that we are up to date at each stage.

Urban Renewal: in the end it's all about the human scale

It’s modular and very agile; and that is probably one of the most intelligent decisions we have made.

PR: As a person and a designer I don’t wish us to be held too much to ransom by technology firms but clearly they can use your project for testing, research and implementation in a proactive way. Are they working with you? Or is there someone between you and them? One of the things I see is there is a lot of technology and suppliers of new ideas, but cities will still need policy and planning and they need the intellectual engagement to bring it all together.

PB: Only a handful of companies are up to the challenge. The most important of those are in consultation with us. I believe in intelligent solutions, but simple solutions are often the best.

PR: Berlin seems to be challenged when it comes to reusing some of its key buildings – ICC and Tempelhof for example. It can be done but are we doing it? There is a huge opportunity to reuse buildings and yet we are often happy to build new and not reuse. There is cross party support for Tegel but there is a divide between reusing other key buildings so politics is part of the urban reuse debate.

PB: Resistance against any change is prevalent. Nonetheless, not only in the last 150 years, but particularly in the last 25 years the city has been in constant change. Our brains are programmed to resist change and in a city that is in such a flux, the force to preserve what’s left is huge.

Paul Rogers (PR) Paul joined Buro Happold in 1986. He has worked in most of Buro Happold’s offices around the world, but today Berlin is home. Not one to shy away from complexity, Paul leads by example and has grown a cross European operation. Paul’s passion lies in integrated sustainable engineering, his considered but visionary leadership style engenders trust and confidence with all who he works with. paul.rogers@burohappold.com

PR: Are we going to leave space for the next generation? Will our kids be able to shape our cities, or will technology? The urban landscape is full.

PB: Our job is to envision the urban future. And in the end it is all about the human scale.

Florian Lennert (FL) Florian Lennert is Director of the Intelligent City Forum, at the Innovation Centre for Mobility and Societal Change (InnoZ) in Berlin. He is also an Associate Director of LSE Enterprise, the venture, consulting and knowledge-transfer division of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). From 1999-2007, Florian served as Director of Corporate Relations at LSE. He is a co-founder and Visiting Fellow (2007-2010) of the LSE Grantham Research Institute for Climate and Environment and a co-founder of the LSE Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation. In the past, he has worked for the German Institute for Urban Research and the German Federal Privatisation Agency.

Urban Renewal: in the end it's all about the human scale

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A state of reinvention David Herd, MD of Buro Happold’s North America region talks about the forward thinking Californian state and the place he today calls home.

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Smart A state ofCities reinvention

Cities A stateSmart of reinvention

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Image: Pelli Clarke Pelli

Image: HOK

Top: Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC), Anaheim, CA, USA. Top right: Transbay Transit Center, San Francisco, CA, USA. Facing page top: Union Station Masterplan, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

California The most populated state in the US, home to 1 out of 8 Americans.

8 of the nation’s 50 most populated cities are located in California.

3rd longest coastline and 3rd largest state in size overall.

If California were a country it would have the 9th largest economy in the world and would be the 34th most populous nation.

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A state of reinvention

Wow, the last five years have been a real rollercoaster of a ride. I moved to California in 2008 as the financial crash sent the state into social and economic crisis. In fact close to bankruptcy two years ago, the budget crises saw people turn their back on the state and leave. Tax revenues went down and businesses were just not able to create cash. Some of the smaller cities in California have had to declare themselves bankrupt, cities such as Mammoth Lakes in the mountainous north, Stockton in the central valley region and San Bernardino in the south. But for me the interesting aspect, the aspect that has been most compelling and encouraging is that the state has never let go of its big dreams.

It has continued to lead the charge in defining policies that recognise the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and embrace the consequential social and economic change.

We’ve seen the state grapple with its finances, cut spending and start to balance the books and now we are coming out the other side. For the first time in a long time the tables are beginning to turn and the state has reversed its fortunes. Slowly but surely the shoots of prosperity are beginning to emerge, house prices are

creeping up and people are returning to make homes, start families and recreate communities. So the changes are being seen and felt at the micro and macro level.

One of the big macro stories, one of the ‘dreams’, is the story of high speed rail. It’s difficult to avoid politics here, California is democratically run – but they are not ‘fruits, nuts and flakes’ as the stereotype suggests. The state recognises that the infrastructure as it stands is inadequate and needs huge investment. But political differences in the US means that big bold schemes such as high speed rail, take an age to start, if they ever start at all. So it’s really significant that the works have begun; the first five billion out of a 100 billion dollar budget is being spent. Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco, will link bus, rail and light rail and will turnover something in the region of 100,000 passengers a day. Over in Orange County – Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center or ARTIC for short, will form part of the high speed network and also support businesses by providing units for retail and restaurants.

Finally in LA we have the Union Station Masterplan, an ambitious scheme that will reinvigorate the 42 acres of the city around the existing 1939 historic station

Image: Grimshaw / Gruen Associates

and act as a catalyst for social, economic and environmental change. The current Governor, Jerry Brown, has declared he wants to see tracks being laid as early as the fall this year. Incredible!

The introduction of these high speed rail hub effects another agenda, the environmental agenda. Staggeringly according to the polls 41% of Americans believe that the seriousness of global warming has been exaggerated so there is a high level of public scepticism around the subject matter. But what we’ve seen here in California, and one of things that the state wants to stop, because it is hugely inefficient on many levels and has a dramatic effect on the environment – is urban sprawl. Just look at Los Angeles, the boundaries of the city cover an area of 469 square miles. But it’s not just California that has this problem, many of the great modern US cities are suffering as they were designed to embrace the age of the automobile. Detroit is a perfect example of this, the city has been left with huge swathes of sparsely populated areas, with no sense of community, and an infrastructure that has become too costly and inefficient to run. Thankfully the Californian State has recognised the

opportunity that the high speed rail projects will bring – a move towards urban densification and hubs that will encourage community, industry and commerce.

California is really leading the way with its thinking and is putting in place regulations and legislation that have environmental and social policy at their heart.

There are some big industries in the state, much of it new money if you like. Many have been created by the social media revolution, but some are more established such as the entertainment industry, aerospace, and electronics. All of them have had to reinvent themselves and keep themselves relevant in our fast moving world. This has been aided and supported by local governments with ground breaking initiatives such as that witnessed in San Francisco, where the city has made its data open in the ‘cloud’ to encourage entrepreneurism.

The state has so much to offer and can attract the best from the global talent pool, and although the cost of living is high the natural resources available are phenomenal. There is a real appetite for progress and evolution and the state is already thinking about what the future

holds for the next 100 years. As Pulitzer prize winning author Alison Lurie said “As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future.”

It’s an exciting place to live and to work.

Our offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco are involved in many of the state’s big dreams and some of the smaller ones too. Big dreams and big impact requires big thinking and our engineers are at the forefront of this macro and micro West Coast revolution!

David Herd david.herd@burohappold.com

Scan to find out more about our work in the United States.

A state of reinvention

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Image: John Cleare

ENVIRONMENTS MAN WILL NEVER TAME Sir Ranulph Fiennes shares his views on global climate change, the rigours of science and frontier exploration with Steve Oxley.

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SIR RANULPH FIENNES

View from Gokyo Ri, Nepal, to Everest.

Image: Daniel Prudek.

When I first met Sir Ranulph Fiennes in the early 1990s, he arrived late for our meeting having got lost en route to the hotel in Manchester. It’s a moment I always remember for its absurdity: the man dubbed “the world’s greatest living explorer”, a man who has conquered some of the most hostile, unmapped reaches of our planet, lost in the signposted, brightly-lit streets of a modern metropolis.

But that was 20 years ago and a lot has happened since then. Amongst a myriad of achievements, Fiennes has completed the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic continent – the longest unsupported polar journey in history; completed seven marathons in seven consecutive days on all seven continents (only three-and-a-half months after a massive heart attack, three-day coma and double bypass); and in May 2009, became the oldest Briton (at the age of 65) ever to reach the summit of Everest.

An earlier attempt in 2005 on the Tibet side of the mountain – taking him to within 300m of the summit – took place shortly after he got married, necessitating a honeymoon at Everest Base Camp, something “which I wouldn’t advise anyone to do,” he says, partly because of the man-made pollution that, at that time, was threatening the fragile ecosystem of the Himalayas.

“The base camp wasn’t particularly pleasant, there was a lot of muck, but I did observe that there were a lot of people beginning to remove it – which they hadn’t previously been doing. In 2008, I went back to try on the other (Nepalese) side – and again they had started paying the sherpas on the way back out to remove rubbish. By the time I went back there in 2009 they’d begun to bring down bodies and old empty oxygen cylinders from above the ‘death zone’ which previously nobody had tried to do because it’s all a bit dangerous in itself – so there are definite signs of improvement on Everest.”

Fiennes’ expeditions have taken him to some of the most remote regions on the planet; regions that most of us will never get to see with our own eyes. I ask him whether, throughout his years of exploration, he has observed any significant changes in some of these far-flung environments, changes he believes could be attributed to global warming.

“When we started trying to break North Pole records in the 1970s I designed the man-haul sledges in such a way that if we came across a channel of open water between the ice flows we would be able to bridge it without the sleds sinking and going to the bottom of the sea. By the 1980s I was designing canoes that could be man hauled – such was the huge increase in the amount of water compared with the ice flows.”

He admits that, in places such as Antarctica where thousands of feet of solid ice can lie on top of 10,000ft-high mountains, the effects, if any, of climate change are less apparent to the naked eye. “If, over the last 100 years, global warming has created a lot of ablation in Antarctica you wouldn’t know it because even if it had sunk one mile it’s still ice, not mountain. So visually, without scientific instruments, you wouldn’t be able to say I observed a change in Antarctica.”

SIR RANULPH FIENNES

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Image: CPOM-UCL-ESA

Left: The first map of sea-ice thickness in the Arctic from the ESA’s CryoSat-2 mission was revealed in 2011.

This information is set to change the understanding of the complex relationship between ice and climate.

From an altitude of just over 700 km and reaching unprecedented latitudes of 88º, CryoSat-2 spent seven months delivering precise measurements to study changes in the thickness of the Earth’s ice.

Science is a subject about which Fiennes appears passionate.

Perhaps the rigour of science, the structured and controlled methods of preparation, developing, analysing and evaluating echoes the disciplined planning of exploration… and the thrill of discovery. As Fiennes points out, it also has historical precedent: “Amundsen was out to race and be first to the South Pole and therefore took the world’s top skiers and the world’s best racing dogs, whereas Scott took with him a load of partial scientists like George Simpson – who became the Director of the Met Office in Britain afterwards – because he was fascinated in finding scientific facts about this unknown continent – and he actually discovered that it was a continent, not floating ice islands.”

When, in 1988, Canadian magazine Macleans claimed his exploits achieved nothing of scientific value, Fiennes sued successfully for libel damages.

“We had people like Sir Vivian Fuchs and Dr Mike Stroud in the High Court in London in front of a jury of 12 for four days because we are very zealous of the fact that we do produce a lot of scientific work, as recognised by the Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and many others. The only thing is that I don’t do it myself – I take scientists and enable them to go to, and survive in, places where they couldn’t by themselves get to because they would probably die. We also train our own people – rugged ex-military people – very carefully to do the scientific tasks and take the measurements that the scientists would do if they were there. Our boys might not exactly understand why 22

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they are doing it, but they do it as meticulously as any scientist would and that data then goes back for study.”

And what lengths they go to. The latest project – The Coldest Journey – sees the expedition team travelling nearly 4,000km over a six-month period, mostly in complete darkness in temperatures as low as -90°C. There is no search-and-rescue facility available, as aircraft cannot penetrate inland during winter due to darkness and risk of fuel freezing.

The expedition also aims to make a decisive contribution to the understanding of the effects of climate change upon the poles. CryoSat-2 (an environmental research satellite launched by the European Space Agency in April 2010) is designed to track changes in the mass of the polar ice caps by measuring the distance to the surface of the ice to within half an inch. Yearround calibration on the ground is the only way to validate this data, so the readings taken by trained members of the Ice Team will form a vital part of this research.

“They do send people out from the bases in summer with instruments which can verify data from the satellite,” explains Fiennes. “In the winter, however, they can’t; health and safety won’t allow it: you don’t go mucking around at -90 in the dark.

We, on the other hand, have been doing just that. So winter verification of the CryoSat-2 will come from our data.”

Sadly for Fiennes, this latest expedition ended early for him. In February this year, in trying to fix his ski bindings in a white-out, he removed his gloves to tighten them up and lost all feeling in his left hand – frostbite had set in, forcing him to

abandon his part in the expedition. Having famously sawed off the tips of his own fingers with a fretsaw after suffering frostbite on a previous expedition, this latest set back was met with his usual self-effacing style. Admitting it was “frustrating”, he says there is no point “crying over spilt milk, or split fingers.”

Whilst the expedition has carried on without him, he has busied himself with administrative duties – the day we speak, Fiennes has been organising couriers to get frozen samples back from Antarctica at the right temperature – and raising money for the expedition’s charity Seeing Is Believing, an initiative to tackle avoidable blindness around the world.

In 1992, Fiennes led a team that discovered the lost city of Ubar on the Yemeni border. The ancient city had succumbed to natural disaster – most probably a severe sandstorm – and serves as one of many historical examples of the vulnerability of our urban centres to extreme natural events. Recent history has been no kinder: witness the devastation caused by the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 and the flooded streets and power cuts in a major city like New York following Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The effects of global warming could, in Fiennes’ view, have some equally catastrophic consequences.

“If the land-based ice, mainly on the Greenland and the western Antarctica ice sheets, removed itself from the land into the sea were it all to melt, the sea would rise 70 metres approximately and so coastal cities would be in trouble. A country like Holland is particularly vulnerable and the Dutch

architects are designing more and more floating houses for people which can also be transported from one area to another on a lorry so it’s got additional advantages to just floating. So humanity is taking it fairly seriously in those places which are most affected.”

I wonder if he has much hope for the future of the planet, but Sir Ranulph Fiennes says he doesn’t set much store by hope. He believes that, as human beings, “we are coping very reasonably” and he points to the clean-up operation at Everest “where we are mopping up where we didn’t mop up a decade ago – it’s all a good sign that we’re beginning to care.”

But having explored and survived in wild and unpredictable environments that man will never tame, accepting a sense of the inevitable is perhaps an obvious outcome and in itself a survival strategy.

“We all know that a meteorite could blow us all up off the face of the earth and that humans as we know them at this moment might disappear for a few millennia. The universe is so huge and we are so tiny within it that all we can do is make our pronouncements about what we think the future might hold – but we don’t even know what the beginning was yet. Famine, volcanoes and tsunamis will go on occurring and, in the overall scheme of things, whatever governments try and do it’s going to be tiny and there’s nothing much you can do about it. And the more you go to places where nature rules, the more you feel that way.”

“

If the land-based ice, mainly on the Greenland and the western Antarctica ice sheets, removed itself from the land into the sea were it all to melt, the sea would rise 70 metres approximately and so coastal cities would be in trouble.

Image: Volodymyr Goinyk

” SIR RANULPH FIENNES

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ARE YOU A Are you a maker? I’ll admit that when that question was posed to me a couple of years ago by a super keen Californian I was somewhat hesitant. “Maybe” was my reply, not sure whether it was good to admit to being a ‘maker’ or not. In the UK admitting that you are a bit of a DIY (do it yourself ) fanatic can risk creating a somewhat negative picture of someone who, with varying degrees of success, undertakes home improvement projects. I have no shame and will freely admit that I am into DIY but wasn’t sure whether that qualified me as a maker in the eyes of my new friend.

Whilst many of us may, from time to time have a flash of inspiration, the kernel of an idea for ‘something’, the vast majority of us are content to leave it at just that, an idea. Not so with a maker, a maker thrives on finding ways to turn ideas into physical reality. The ‘something’ may be a tool, a play thing, art, the solution to a problem, clothing, transportation or any form of manmade object.

In the US the maker movement is big; a vast network and community of problem solvers who come together either through the web, at maker meets or at workshops such as TechShop and FabLab that have been spawned to support groups of makers.

It can be argued that the desire and skills to convert ideas into physical things is part of a resilient society. For those in the developing world the ability to repair things with limited local resources is a necessity, which in turn drives a high degree of manual skills – a knowledge of materials and how to work them.

Compare that with a ‘throw away and replace’ culture driven by relatively cheap labour costs elsewhere. If you don’t have to, who wants to stand at a workbench laboriously learning manual skills when the virtual world and a 24

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computer keyboard beckons? In the west the answer has been not many, there has also been a decline in the numbers of children undertaking design and technology lessons. What’s interesting is that digital fabrication tools, laser cutters, CNC milling machines, 3D printers and the like have lowered the barriers to making. Instead of spending months learning manual skills, if you can draw the thing you want to make in 3D on a computer and if you understand the properties of the material you want to make it out of, you are well on the way to turning ideas into reality.

From there it’s a small step to promoting making through setting design challenges, competitions at a local or national level that will engage people, particularly children in making activities.

But why is this important?

Well one can argue that a society that is devoid of making is something of a culturally barren place. But more importantly the mind set of resourceful problem solving in the physical world has such a profound effect on the prosperity of a nation.

People like will.i.am are working hard to put the A in STEM. STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) + A (art) are the key ingredients in making STEAM. These skills are seen as key focus areas for the school curriculum to counter the recent decline and to ensure developed countries maintain their position in design and manufacturing.

The act of making, or of turning ideas in physical reality draws heavily on STEAM skills, taking pure science subjects like mathematics and physics and applying them to making challenges helps children grasp principles and learn rapidly – particularly in a nonprescriptive environment. Slavishly following prescribed plans to make a book end is a whole different challenge to for example designing and making a wind powered racer to compete in races. Transforming teaching in STEAM is happening, but it needs to happen a lot more quickly.

So in answer to the question, yes I am maker, and a proud one at that!

Gavin Thompson gavin.thompson@burohappold.com

MAKER?

Find out more about the work of the Happold Trust with STEM.

Institute of Making

Images: Institute of Making

As a pioneering example of raising the importance of making in higher education, University College London recently opened the Institute of Making under the founding direction of Dr Zoe Laughlin. The institute occupies dedicated space at the university’s central London campus and is a free resource that is open to all at UCL. The Institute aims to provide a supportive environment for promoting understanding in materials and how to explore their use in a creative environment.

Having a physical home for making within an academic environment is important, but our experience would suggest that another key to success is the pure passion, broad experience and energy that Zoe and her colleagues bring to the area of breaking down the barriers of turning ideas into physical reality.

Smart Cities ARE YOU A MAKER?

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USER REVIEW:

LIBRARY OF LIVERPOOL

LIVERPOOL, UK

Liverpool is a city well known for its strong cultural identity and pioneering spirit . Now an ambitious plan to build on this proud tradition by renovating the Central Library has finally been realised. The reinvented space includes a bespoke climate control system to protect the library’s extensive archive, as well as a new accessible space that unites the historic and new build areas of the building. But how successful has it really been?

Y spoke to Library and Archive Manager David Stoker and three generations of one visiting family to hear their views‌

The Library of Liverpool

Images: Buro Happold

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Library and Archive Manager David Stoker Y: How Long have you been working at the Central Library?

D: 18 years and all of this time I have been working towards this moment – having the library refurbished, restored and reopened to the public.

Y: Were there a lot of problems with the building before?

D: Absolutely, it’s hard to imagine today just how drab and uninviting it was. The original building was hit by a bomb during the Second World War so was rebuilt during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was very tired, worn out and dreary – the historical buildings were particularly bad and it was almost impossible to find your way around. Leaking roofs were also a big problem – we had to use buckets to collect rainwater, which is obviously not good for books or archives!

Y: What made you want to work at the librarywas there anything in particular that inspired you?

D: I am a trained archivist so I knew that the library has excellent collections. I also knew that they needed a great deal of improvement and wanted to be a part of doing something worthwhile for my hometown.

Y: So you were a man on a mission?

D: Yes, you could say that. As both a history and an archive student I utilised the facilities here and used

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to think that they hadn’t really improved since I was a child. They needed a massive boost. I could see the potential…

Y: So has that goal finally been reached for you?

D: Very definitely yes! I am delighted, but the biggest test is the public’s response which has been overwhelmingly positive. On the first day we were open until midnight – a light show was projected onto the building and we had readings and people dressed up as characters from books. 15,000 people turned up, with 100,000 visiting the library in the first month. This is a huge increase and at the moment we are on track for million visitors in our first year.

Y: Do you have a favourite book or artefact from the collections?

D: A letter by George Stephenson, the railway engineer. He built the world’s first passenger railway between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830. The letter is to his son who was mining in Bogota and, unusually for Stephenson, it is hand written. It has all sorts of interesting personal details – he talks about what his wife is doing, how he is refining his engines to make them more efficient and the difficulties he was experiencing building the railway across boggy and built up land. He even asks his son to bring him back a variety of seeds from Columbia for planting in his garden. For me it’s a fascinating letter – it’s only four pages long but has so much detail. We put it forward for the UNESCO Memory Of The World Programme and it was accepted, so it has real status.

Y: Is there a favourite book or artefact amongst visitors?

D: One thing which is very popular is the first Royal Charter for Liverpool which dates back to 1207. A lot of people in Liverpool know about it because we had an 800th anniversary celebration in 2007. It is now on display due to popular demand.

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Y: You must have to have a lot of specialist equipment to keep these historic documents from deteriorating?

D: Well that’s really where this scheme came in – we needed a building that could meet the standards for archives, which are very specific. Tight climate control, no natural daylight, we also have four hour fire protection for the building. Our archives go back to the 13th Century – there is a lot that goes into keeping these things safe for the future.

Y: Do you feel that the aligning of historic architecture with modern design works? Has it been a success here at Liverpool?

D: We are a grade II* listed complex in a world heritage site so it was very important to respect the building’s history – in fact we have exposed and restored many of the historical features that were boxed in during the 1950s. At the same time, we really wanted to create a ‘wow’ factor when people enter the building – the entrance foyer certainly delivers this, with its modern interpretation of the reading room’s traditional dome. The redevelopment has been a real success and people are really impressed when they see it for the first time. People come from far and wide to view it, even from the cruise liners. It must be the most photographed building in Liverpool at the moment!

Y: How have the improvements to the library contributed to the community?

D: The redevelopment has given the city a real lift during this time of austerity. We provide important facilities such as free computer and internet use, children’s clubs and entertainment, support to small businesses and even archive facilities to help people trace their family history – all in a fantastic, inspirational space that the people of Liverpool can finally be proud of.

Y: Do you have a favourite book?

AH: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens; it’s the first grown up book I ever took out from the library so it really stands out. If I could have written any book it would definitely be Pride and Prejudice though.

BS: Mine would have to be Roald Dahl’s Matilda.

AN: My favourite book of all time is Her Benny by Silas Hocking; it’s a Victorian novel about the street children of Liverpool.

Y: Are there any improvements that still could be made?

Y met three generations of women, Anne Needham, 88, Annie Hughes, 49 and Beth Scanton, 14 who were reading in the Imagine zone. They gave us their views on the newly renovated library…

Y: Do you visit the library often? Why are you here today?

AH: Not to the Central Library. I do think that it is sad that we have lost a lot of the local libraries in Liverpool though; people like my mother can’t always get into the city centre. The over 12’s could also benefit from more activities. Film, writing, arts – there is always stuff for the little ones but not for the teenagers.

Y: How do you feel the refurbishments have been received in the community?

AH: Very well; everyone is really positive. I wish I could have got here sooner to see it.

Y: Do you think you will be back?

(All three in unison) Oh yes definitely!

AH: I’m here today with my mother and my niece to see the refurbishment. We are three generations of artists so we will be using the arts department a lot – my mother was a painter, I am a fabric technician and my niece would like to be an illustrator.

AN: I started coming here in the 1930s; it’s certainly changed a great deal since then!

Y: What for you has been the biggest change?

AH: The whole thing! I didn’t recognise it at all – it’s much more user friendly and it’s great that the wonderful historic features have been retained.

Y: Do you like the themed areas?

AH: I like them; they are really user friendly and reflect how people do things nowadays. I think that people are so used to using computers that they are less inclined to search for things. It reminds me more of a shop than a library, much less formal.

Scan to find out more about our work on the Library of Liverpool.

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The Big Picture

PURE Tension

Volvo Car Italia and The Plan magazine Beating off 150 other competitors Synthesis Design + Architecture and Buro Happold wowed judges at Volvo Italia and The Plan magazine with their stunning dual purpose solar shade pavilion.

The first of its kind, this portable solar charging station works with the new Volvo V60 Plug-in Hybrid car and can be stored within the boot, making a renewable energies road trip a reality.

The flexible mesh structure is held in place by carbon fiber rods and embedded with photovoltaic cells so that the pavilion can absorb energy from the sun or indoor lighting; as practical as it is stunning the new pavilion will be used to promote the car at fairs and exhibitions around Italy.

Volvo is discussing further development, so ‘Pure Tension’ could be the catalyst for bringing the electric car into the mainstream.

Image: Synthesis Design + Architecture

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The Big Picture: PURE Tension

Scan for more info on The Plan magazine’s competition.

The Big Picture: PURE Tension

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PHOENIX FROM THE FLAMES

CULTURE BUCKS THE TREND The words global financial crisis are now so widely bandied about that the significance of what has happened and continues to affect our economies today has been almost trivialised. Yet every country, industry, business, man, women and child is inextricably linked to the financial services sector and those links seem indissoluble.

One surprise that leaps out however is the resilience and unanticipated growth of the cultural sector.

Arguably, one would have predicted that the cultural sector would be one of the first and very real sufferers of such economic woes; with governments tightening the purse strings, nervous philanthropists not wanting to part with their cash and families and friends taking stock and spending less on those items considered frivolous and indulgent.

But what we have seen is that practice hasn’t followed theory. The cultural economy has become more independent and liberated. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 2008, when the world started retracting, “at an international scale cultural trade has outperformed most sectors of the economy in terms of growth in the recession”, furthermore the same report in 2010 confirms the findings and reveals a continued robust response from cultural trade between 2008 – 2010.

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One of the reasons for this is that many of our global cities have invested in, or are investing in their creative or cultural offering. They are competing with one another for the cultural tourists pounds, dollars and euros and to do that they need some compelling cultural attractions. Surviving on heritage alone just isn’t enough. A vibrant cultural scene plays a very large part in global urban marketing or place making to attract businesses and people. And so the money continues to be found to support these schemes. Securing cultural prosperity is a much more collaborative mission.

Stephen Jolly, Global Sector Director for Culture at Buro Happold explains “investment comes normally from three streams, public funding, philanthropy and commercial supporters, and we are seeing more joint ventures between these three parties. For government and local authorities investment in cultural projects, particularly in large scale refurbishment, or new build can be the opportunity to create a catalyst that can kick start regeneration”.

PHOENIX FROM THE FLAMES

And examples of these are seen the world over; major international developments include the Saadiyat Island cultural quarter in Abu Dhabi where there are new members to the family Louvre and Guggenheim being created in addition to new venues such as the Sheikh Zayed National Museum. The ambitious West Kowloon Cultural District is set to become a landmark on Hong Kong’s waterfront and in Europe the new proposed culture centre and library for Karlshamn, Sweden will be a low energy community hub. Over in the States, Hollywood are getting in on the act unveiling their plans for a new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures which will celebrate the Academy’s own mission to cultivate and preserve the art of film.

Scan to find out more about our work in culture.

“There are of course short term financial gains to be had from cultural venues, particularly as they diversify to extend their commerciality to appeal to day and night time revenue streams. But longer term we see an impact on social infrastructure; the way in which a community has it’s wellbeing and morale raised by making art more accessible to a wider demographic mix of visitors, that’s where the real benefit lies” says Jolly.

So there are some complex challenges ahead for these players as they adapt to the changing financial trends and peaks and troughs in funding. To say that the cultural economy acts autonomously from the financial economy is too bold a statement to make, there are clearly many factors that contribute to its success and failure including funding, education, industry, training, venues and audiences.

Of course not everyone in the cultural sector has experienced expansion, financial confidence and development.

Those venues that are of a size that mean they cannot attract the big name sponsors, are heavily reliant on grants and public funding and are unable to bank on enough volunteers to keep doors open are still really feeling the squeeze. Enterprising organisations are combatting this by sharing space with more regional, mutually beneficial businesses; for instance a café and gallery brush shoulders with one another where they could not simply be competitive enough on their own.

But we can conclude that society demands and desires cultural experiences. The galvanising force of cultural attractions to generate greater revenues for local businesses and academia is palpable. They create clusters and forge new alliances. A society without culture is an incomplete society and the cost of culture is far outweighed by the benefits that culture brings to us all as human beings.

Stephen Jolly stephen.jolly@burohappold.com

CULTURE BUCKS THE TREND

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Over the last forty years Patrick Woodroffe has produced the lighting designs for an eclectic collection of people including rock stars, opera stars, ballet dancers and hip-hop performers, fine artists, reigning monarchs and desert sheikhs. Y caught up with him at his home to find out a little more about the man behind some of the greatest shows on earth.

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Why did you choose lighting?

Lighting sort of chose me. My brother Simon Woodroffe (of YO! Sushi and Dragons’ Den fame) was in the pop business – he was a roadie for a rock band – so he got me a job. There was only one lighting company in England then, and I started working with them putting up lighting rigs, which were tiny in those days. Noone was really known as a lighting designer, you would just ‘do the lights’. The travelling was fun – it was exciting, like being in some kind of circus.

I got an amazing break when I was on a Rod Stewart tour. I was just starting the tour as a technician when he fired his lighting guy three days before the tour started. They looked around the room for a replacement, and I got the job!

That tour was the making of me. I went around the world in 1977 and 1979 with Rod in the days when his road crew was maybe half a dozen people. In comparison when I was with The Rolling Stones last week there were 230 of us; so a big change.

On that tour I learnt about working with artists, understanding artists and understanding performance which is a complicated thing. As vulnerable as one feels oneself and as insecure as one feels about one’s own work, you realise fairly early on that the artists feel far more insecure about theirs. By this time I had a pretty good career working with most of the top rock bands, but by that time most of the guys were in their late 40s and 50s so I thought they wouldn’t carry on playing for much longer. So I deliberately started to look for different avenues in lighting, and I started to work in dance in opera, and I did some architecture. I enjoyed all those things but of course the rock bands all carried on going too.

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Given the size of the crews today do you find that the artists are getting detached from the design?

No, they are still involved with the key people on the tour. Back in those days Rod (Stewart) would have known every member of the crew by name. A lot of the people that are with The Stones have been around them for a long time, but the band only deal with the people that are relevant to them on a day to day basis – designers, sound engineers, tour managers.

Where do you find inspiration?

I’m constantly aware of light wherever I go, and when I see something interesting then I take a picture, or sketch it, or just remember it – and that can become the basis for a whole show design. I remember going to meetings to do an opera in Vienna and seeing a big petroleum refinery on the way from the airport.

It was the most amazing thing. It almost looked like a space shuttle launch pad and only lit with short fluorescent light bulbs – thousands of them – and little bulk head lights. That’s how I lit the next opera that I did.

I am constantly inspired or directed by the team around me. If you have an open mind and you have a creative team that are happy to collaborate and to offer ideas then you can really fly and make great work.

Are there any particular artists that you wished you worked with and haven’t had the opportunity to?

Yes, Pink Floyd – because they really make amazing light shows.

And David Bowie.

Is there a temptation to use all the tools at your disposal and throw everything at a show?

I can’t imagine that lighting is much different to most forms of design – sometimes it is what you leave out that’s important. I did a great number with Stevie Wonder – seven minutes in complete darkness. It was very powerful but of course it made perfect and obvious sense. All of the lights in the world mean nothing unless they have relevance.

London Olympics then – when did you get the call?

I got a phone call two or three years before as did quite a few people. I think we all said the same thing which was “sounds really interesting and I’m not sure if I’m going to be available but anything I can do to help”. I knew it would take up an enormous amount of time, that there would be huge pressure, that there probably wouldn’t be enough money and very likely that it would be politically complicated. It came after China, which was for sure the greatest show on earth – in terms of the spectacle I can’t believe you’ll see anything else like that on the planet for years. I really mean that.

So I hummed and hawed, and I went to see the stadium. I remember thinking, actually, this is pretty great – it’s on time, it’s on budget, it’s ahead of schedule and all seems to be well managed. I started to have this sense that there was a group of people here that might know what they are doing and it could really be rather good!

What convinced you?

A friend of mine who was one of the producers said “listen, you just have to decide whether on the 27th July 2012 you want to be in the stadium making the show or you want to be at home watching it on the telly”. I thought I might as well, if anyone is going to do it, it might as well be me. So I said yes and I haven’t regretted it.

I do remember that my aspirations changed over the time of the project. I started thinking all I want to do is not mess it up. Let’s just put this on without it being a disaster. And at the very end everything came together in a perfect storm. I remember thinking two days before in our second dress rehearsal “this could be really great”, even though there were still a lot of unknowns.

thank you. I really had this sense that it wasn’t just that the English can show people how shows like that should be done, it was bigger than that. We can do great stuff when a group of people get together and the Gods are on your side and all the planets are aligned and things don’t break down. You can do great work on that scale. That was a great feeling. But the best feeling was waking up the morning after.

Without a doubt it was the biggest project any of us had undertaken and extraordinarily, against all the odds, it turned out to be a bigger success than any of us thought it would be. That is very inspirational on many levels as it means you never really get frightened of working on such big shows again.

Looking back now at London 2012, would you have changed anything if you could of, anything you would have done differently if you could have your time again on it?

I think if I were to ever do an Olympics again I would focus on the basic stuff and getting that right first. There are the cultural segments and the protocol segments to consider, and they are two very distinct things, run by different organisations. Initially I thought the London Olympics was all about what they call the cultural segments, so all the Danny Boyle stuff. Culturally you can do whatever you like. But the flag, the Royal Box, the cauldron, the entrance for the athletes – all the protocol stuff run by the International Olympic Committee at London 2012 – this was the stuff that was set in stone. I thought they would be the inbetween bits, but as time went on I realised that of course to the IOC they were the only bits that mattered, and if we didn’t get them right it would look kind of cheap. I was getting emails at 4am from the heads of the IOC committee saying “the flag had a shadow on it or we didn’t see the Queen when she came into the box, or there was a weird reflection on Seb Coe.” All simple things in theory but of course not so simple when you are trying to light them in a rain storm, with no rehearsal and from 150 metres away.

So if Brazil were to call tomorrow...?

I’ve done a lot of work in Brazil, in fact I’d contest that it is the greatest country on the planet. I’ve worked in Brazil for over 25 years, many of my best friends live there and I lecture there. The country is a big part of my life so of course I would love to do it.

Even if I don’t, I think I will still go and celebrate whoever does.

And on the night?

About half way through, when all the athletes came in, we all started getting this flood of texts and emails from our friends around the world, a lot of them competitors. All were saying A TOUCH OF BRILLIANCE

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“I’M CONSTANTLY AWARE

OF LIGHT WHEREVER I GO…

…AND WHEN I SEE SOMETHING INTERESTING THEN I TAKE A PICTURE, OR SKETCH IT, OR JUST REMEMBER IT…

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Images: Stufish, Ralph Larmann Courtesy of Woodroffe Bassett Design

…AND THAT CAN BECOME THE BASIS FOR A WHOLE SHOW DESIGN.

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Image: George Schon

It’s dusk, the light is just fading, in the distance – the sound of dogs barking, and boats idling down the river. Beneath the shadows of a sleeping giant, an icon of industry and ingenuity a small group of guests are gathered for dinner. Justin Phillips, Partner at Buro Happold introduces his ultimate dinner party guests at his chosen location – Battersea Power Station.

Scan to find out more about our work on the Battersea redevelopment.

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JUSTIN PHILLIPS Justin is leading the Buro Happold team in the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, London UK. Justin’s skills lie in his ability to support clients to deliver large scale projects, through integrated engineering, providing them with holistic, sustainable solutions. justin.phillips@burohappold.com

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Winston said the right thing at the right time and you need at least one provocative person to generate an open discussion! He did have a speech impediment but that will be the last thing anyone will ever remember about Churchill. Instead his use of words are his ultimate legacy:“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give”.

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The most forgiving man alive. What a man, what a life and what a symbol he is to the world. It’s hard to comprehend how anyone can put aside all the pain, prejudice, struggle and persecution he has endured and still have the energy to fight for what is right.

His policy of truth and reconciliation saved a nation.

And besides the Special AKA’s Free Nelson Mandela is a classic!

SCARLETT JOHANSSON

Screen siren, she can sit next to me. This golden globe nominee has shown that she has the talent to tackle some tough roles in films such as Lost in Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring but can also vamp it up in Marvel comic films. Multi-talented, beautiful and artistic, is there any hope for a simple engineer like me?

ROBERT DOWNEY JR.

Edgy dude. He’s certainly lived life to the full – with highs and lows punctuating his career.

His lows have been truly low – drug abuse and police arrests – but he’s battled his demons and come through.

His appearance in Chaplin was fantastic – his addictive personality really being used to good effect as he studied Chaplin meticulously. I also enjoyed his take on Sherlock Holmes and his eccentric depiction of Iron Man.

ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL

The original train spotter and el supremo engineer. Not just a designer, he came up with the ideas and got the finance sorted. He also makes the cut as he is shorter than me and I don’t want Scarlett’s head turned! It would be fascinating to get his views on HS2. Although he did die young from overworking, I need to think about this…

RICHARD BURTON

ROGER FEDERER

Here’s a man with some stories to tell – he would keep us all entertained with anecdotes from the golden age of film and boy what a voice he had! He once famously said “the only thing in life is language. Not love.

Not anything else.” Despite being plagued by alcohol and smoking addiction, numerous health complaints and five failed marriages Richard Burton could capture an audience like no-one else. Just listen to the War of the Worlds audio!

The ultimate sportsman.

A lion. What a sporting hero Federer is – he’s been consistently at the top of his game for the last decade – I would dare to say he is probably the greatest tennis player of all time. He’s so fluid, always in control and with a sublime talent leaves the muscular fitness geeks in his wake. An ambassador who does a huge amount of work for charity through his foundation. A good dinner companion who can be relied upon to bring the Lindt chocolates.

DAME ELLEN MACARTHUR

Every dinner needs a dame.

Inspirational and very brave sailor now doing some interesting sustainability work. Her ‘circular economy’ framework for education and business is very compelling – there are definitely things we could all learn from her.

Perhaps I’ll chat to her more over coffee and Roger’s chocolates.

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Engineering resilience

Satellite image of Superstorm Sandy heading towards the eastern seaboard of the United States.

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Superstorm Sandy devastated New York, wreaking havoc and causing billions of dollars of damage. In answer the US government is responding in equal measure leaping to multi-billion dollar solutions to ensure this can never happen again, but are they moving too quickly? Kate Ascher from Buro Happold explores the issues.

Image: NASA GSFC

As Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian economist suggested, bigger isn’t always better – and when it comes to making cities more resilient to climate change and sea-level rise, it appears that quite the opposite might just be true. Many of the innovations and accidents of planning that allowed parts of New York City’s built environment to survive Hurricane Sandy unscathed cost little – and rolling them out on a large scale is almost certain to offer better value for money than big, new civil engineering solutions.

Hurricane Sandy, also known as ‘Superstorm Sandy’ tore through the New York metropolitan region on the evening of October 29, 2012. Two separate weather fronts colluded with a high tide to produce astronomical high tides approximately five percent higher than normal, with water levels at the Battery reaching an unprecedented fourteen feet (measured as feet above the average low tide). Flooding was mostly confined to low-lying coastal areas in the city and along the shorefronts of Long Island and New Jersey, where both primary and holiday beach residences abut the Atlantic Ocean. The damage was enormous – impacting approximately 98,000 housing units in New York City alone – and selective: some communities were destroyed in full and others left relatively unscathed.

Within a matter of weeks, the city, the state and the federal government had convened commissions to evaluate what might be done in the future to avoid similar catastrophes. The state reported first, encouraging research into ideas such as tidal barriers and gates across the entire mouth of the Hudson River and sea walls around lower Manhattan. The costs in dollars of these ideas are enormous – in multiples of billions – as would be the impacts on adjacent communities.

Nevertheless, pundits have continued to articulate the need for dramatic action and point to civil engineering innovations like those embraced by the Netherlands and London to begin to define future flood control strategies.

Deeply suspicious of the speed with which these solutions were proposed, and equally concerned about the cost involved in implementing them, a group of NYC civic organizations – under the coordinating mantle of Buro Happold – undertook an assessment of the successes of various smaller scale strategies in avoiding or mitigating the impact of the storm. What they found, recently released to the public (www.sandysuccessstories.org), was that the most successful strategies by far were relatively small and inexpensive, as well as relatively easy to implement on a practical and political level. Many of them also provided additional benefits to New Yorkers during non-storm events.

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The nineteen case studies produced by the group touch on energy, building design, site planning, and land-use issues. Together they speak to a range of immediately implementable strategies and technologies, from elevating structures and mechanical equipment to creating waterfront parks as buffers to mitigate flood forces. Not all are physical interventions either: some strategies, such as disaster readiness plans, speak directly to community resilience.

Concrete Plant Park along the Bronx River, for example, was reclaimed from its industrial past by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation in collaboration with community partners.

Although its primary purpose was to provide more recreational space for the neighborhood, the carefully designed park increased the area’s capacity to detain water and created a buffer that protected the surrounding communities from flooding. Equally effective was the Lower East Side People’s Mutual Housing Association’s disaster preparedness plan – clear procedures that had been put in place for their buildings prior to the storm that reduced damage to mechanical systems and ensured business continuity during and after the event.

Spread across the region, the case studies include a number of what might be termed serendipitous successes – such as a residential high-rise at 4705 Center Boulevard, where contamination at the site required the developer to build at higher elevations than he might otherwise have done. But they also include very deliberate ones, such as the ‘green infrastructure’ component of the city’s sustainability plan, where the creation of small vegetated triangles, curbside bump-outs, and trees helped avoid disaster.

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Some of the solutions were initiated by people without any outside prompting: e.g. one beachside community relied on volunteers to help build and plant a double dune system to protect their homes – which it did admirably. Others, for example at a new development in Queens known as Arverne by the Sea, were forced upon developers by increasingly ‘sustainable’ local planning regulations. In the future, however, there is little question that it is the government’s responsibility to manage the planning of the built environment with an eye to the new climate-based challenges.

The Sandy Success Stories suggest directions for government action on many fronts, including the value of: creating and maintaining quality open space such as parks and wetlands along the waterfront, for both recreational and ecological purposes

Whether or not New York City and State have the capacity to implement these ideas is unclear. The track record of American states and localities implementing real change after disasters is mixed as evidenced by the recent tornado-related devastation in Moore, Oklahoma, (the loss in Moore could have been greatly minimized had the city updated its building codes in response to the destruction caused by a similar storm just 14 years earlier). But if the enthusiasm of the groups behind the Sandy Success Stories remains in place, any new mayoral administration will think twice before endorsing controversial, expensive and risky civil engineering solutions at the expense of more doable, cheaper and most likely more beneficial ways of adapting to the new environmental realities we face.

Kate Ascher kate.ascher@burohappold.com

enhancing stormwater management through the expansion of green infrastructure such as New York City’s Greenstreets program and tree plantings supporting building designs that are able to withstand storm impacts, heat waves, and utility failures and allow building operators to continue to provide key services to their tenants investing in clean distributive generation technologies, such as solar and combined heat and power installations, that are able to perform during disruptions to the grid promoting sustainable transportation alternatives to ensure mobility when gas supply or mass transit is interrupted strengthening the resilience of communities by providing access to climate risk information and developing local disaster response plans.

Scan to find out more about Buro Happold’s work on Sandy Success Stories.

Image: Buro Happold

New York City has implemented a variety of initiatives to improve water quality, restore natural habitats, mitigate urban heat island effect, clean the air, and reduce energy consumption.

These sustainability investments increased the city’s resilience to the impacts of intense storms, reducing the need for costly repairs and replacements.

Morrisania Hunts Point East Harlem

Alley Creek - Little Neck Bay

East New York

Stapleton Far Rockaway Marine Park Salt Marsh

Dreier Offerman Park Green Infrastructure Initiatives Trees for Public Health Neighborhoods Million Trees Planted Distribution NYC Bike Share current and planned stations Major Bike Routes Restored Wetland Projects Reinforced Boardwalks

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The Big Picture

Xiqu Centre

West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong Integrated engineering takes to the stage The first venue to be announced as part of the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, the Xiqu Centre will be one of 17 core arts and cultural venues to be opened within the district.

Designed and delivered over the next four years, this 30,000m2 landmark cultural venue will provide world class facilities that preserve and promote Chinese performing arts in the heart of the culturally rich heritage city of Hong Kong .

David Littler david.littler@burohappold.com

Image: West Kowloon Cultural District Authority.

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The Big Picture: Xiqu Centre, Hong Kong

New opera house is set to meet BEAM Plus Gold targets and will use a raft of sustainable interventions to provide the all important ‘qi’.

Acting as a cultural sanctuary the striking new opera house will be a beacon of light for contemporary arts in China.

Scan for more info on Buro Happold’s work on the Xiqu Centre.

The Big Picture: Xiqu Centre, Hong Kong

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Before Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron and Edward Norton came along with a dusting of Hollywood razzle dazzle, the original Italian Job of 1969 was one of the most iconic British heist films ever. Combining the Italian Mafia, Michael Caine, Noel Coward, classic cars, breath-taking scenery and a serious stash of gold bullion The Italian Job had it all‌ Set in Turin, it involves a gold bullion heist and subsequent Mini car chase across the city. Ingenious planning from Croker and some sly computer wizardry saw the red, white and blue Mini’s careering through a shopping parade and hurtle across a river weir and through a sewer pipe to escape to a short 50

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lived victory whilst the local Polizi were hampered by traffic gridlock after the gang rigged the traffic lights to cause huge jams on the road. But if The Italian Job was all about how they did things in the 1960s, how would we do the job today?

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4M 1969

First, the $4 million in 1969 is now, thanks to inflation, more like $56 million.

It is a lot, but as the largest winning single UK lotto ticket was over $35m, perhaps in 2013 we should abandon crime and buy lottery tickets instead (an option not available to Croker and the guys as the UK national lottery started in 1994).

The world’s population has also increased, up from 3.6 billion in 1969 to over 7 billion in 2013, with even faster growth in cities. If this didn’t mean our cities were crowded enough, the total number of vehicles on the road has increased faster, from 200 million to over

750 million. As a consequence most cities, even with the latest traffic control systems working overtime, operate on a knife edge. Today you wouldn’t need to nobble a computer to cause a traffic jam, they are every day events. For example, Time magazine claimed in Sao Paulo that at peak times the typical length of the traffic jam spans 120 miles with drivers spending up to three-to-four hours behind the wheel in traffic each day.

The problem today is not how to create a traffic jam, but how to create one that doesn’t spiral out of control and lock up our escape route as well.

Even if the gang could hack the traffic control system and cause a jam, their

2013

exit route is unlikely to be as easy as in 1969. Since the 1960s city planners have worked hard to exclude cars from many parts of the city. Then we face another challenge – the new mini is almost half a meter longer, a third of a meter wider and about 10cm higher than the old mini – it probably wouldn’t even fit through those tight gaps anymore?

Clearly, in today’s environmentally conscious and sustainable world, the answer is the Metro, its quick, it’s frequent, and it doesn’t get tangled up in traffic jams. After all, we might want to steal the loot but we still need to save the planet. At this point you’re probably

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thinking that won’t work – there is too much gold to carry on the Metro. Well, in our defence, the original film was hardly accurate on this point either. At $4m the bullion would have weighed around 3,200 kilos, meaning each Mini would have had to carry one and a half times its own weight in gold.

We could get around this problem by adopting a 2013 solution – we steal tritium instead of gold. As one of the most valuable commodities by weight we would need just 10’s rather than 1,000’s of kilos to hit our $56 million target. The only problem would be finding somewhere with that much tritium and then finding someone to buy it.

Perhaps we need to go back to the gold and the old getaway route but ditch the new large minis for a smaller and smarter vehicle. The answer might just be here already – it is called the EN-V. At about 1.4m wide it is the same width as

the old Mini, but it is only half its length.

What is even more attractive, given the risks involved in the plan, the EN-V doesn’t need a driver, and they can be programmed to operate in convoy. So, all we need to do is load the gold where the two passengers would normally sit, start them off on the route we want, and then hop on the metro to make our own exit in comfort and safety. What is more, as the EN-V use electric engines we are doing our bit for the environment as well. I bet we can even get them in red, white and blue.

That just leaves that final 1969 get away by the gang in the coach to think about.

We all know what that led to. This time I think we shall simply meet our EN-V convoy at the railway station, pick up the loot, and make our exit by High Speed Train. As we accelerate away from the scene of the crime at over 250 km/ hour, we can sit back and congratulate ourselves on becoming the 2013 intake of the “Self Preservation Society”.

Philip Bates is Director of Strategic Transport at Buro Happold, he has advised governments across the world on their transport projects, keeping us all moving. His no nonsense, straight talking approach makes him the perfect alternative criminal mastermind! If you are planning a heist or just need some strategic counsel then you can contact Philip at philip.bates@burohappold.com

Scan to find out more about Buro Happold’s work in transport.

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BURO HAPPOLD GLOBAL SECTOR DIRECTORS AVIATION

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RETAIL

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JUSTIN PHILLIPS E: justin.phillips@burohappold.com

ANDY KEELIN E: andy.keelin@burohappold.com

STEPHEN JOLLY E: stephen.jolly@burohappold.com

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INDUSTRIAL

ZOE METCALFE E: zoe.metcalfe@burohappold.com

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PADRAIC KELLY E: padraic.kelly@burohappold.com

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WATER

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www.burohappold.com enquiries@burohappold.com @burohappold Written and produced by BURO HAPPOLD

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Image: Jan Will

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