London Design + Engineering, Day 3

Thursday, March 7th 2019

Students meet with Arup

About Arup

Students working on their Architectural Designs with Arup's architecture team.

Arup

Our day began with a quick breakfast at a cafe in the Notting Hill neighborhood before riding the central line to Bond Street Station, from which we enjoyed a walk to the offices of Arup. Arup is an internationally recognized engineering firm, that specializes in all parts of building design from architecture, systems engineering, fire engineering, mechanical engineering, and structural engineering. Being an international firm, Arup has offices all over the world, however their headquarters and largest workforce remain in London, to follow the wishes of their founder Ove Arup. Ove Arup’s position as a philosopher and an engineer gave him a different perspective when compared with his contemporaries. Ove Arup wanted his firm not to just focus engineering but also on how it pertains to people. Arup’s slogan is “We shape a better world” and it is evident that the company has continued to hold onto the values of their late founder. Whilst at Arup, students met members of each of the three main facets of Arup: architects, mechanical engineers, and structural engineers. We began first with meeting a member of the structural design team. We disused the multitude of forces on buildings themselves, the classifications engineers use to represent them and then the equations used to design the core of a structure to suit the forces on a building. Next we met with two of their mechanical engineers to discuss how they design the mechanical system in a building to minimize their environmental impact. Lastly we met with Arup’s architectural division which gave us a design challenge to create a new mixed use structure a few blocks from their office. After presenting our solutions in the form of sketches they showed us what they had designed. We then enjoyed a lunch with Arup.

Foster + Partners

After visiting with Arup, everyone gathered in their design teams to work on the design projects that we will be making tomorrow at Makerversity. After those were finalized, we indulged in some shopping in the areas that surround Oxford Circus. After the shopping was complete we boarded the bus to go to the world renowned architecture firm, Foster + Partners. Once at the Foster + Partner’s campus we met with our tour guide, George, who showed us the main studio, the model making room, and their material libraries. While there, we saw the models for the Gherkin, Apple Park, and several for upcoming Foster + Partners Projects. We concluded our night by going to a traditional english pub, called the Prince Albert. After that we soaked in the night city scape before taking the tube back to our hotel. We then finalized everything for the Makerlab for the following day.

Apple Park Model

Apple Park Ventilation Model