Arup Group


Arup is a multinational professional services firm headquartered in London which provides engineering, architecture, design, planning, project management and consulting services for all aspects of the built environment. Founded by Sir Ove Arup in 1946, the firm has over 16,000 staff based in 96 offices across 35 countries around the world. Arup has participated in projects in over 160 countries.
Arup is owned by trusts, the beneficiaries of which are Arup's past and present employees, who receive a share of the firm's operating profit each year.

History

Arup was founded in London in 1946, as the Ove N. Arup Consulting Engineers by Ove Arup. He set out to build a firm where professionals of diverse disciplines could work together to produce projects of greater quality than was achievable by them working in isolation. In 1970, the firm reformed as "Ove Arup & Partners". In 1963, together with the architect Philip Dowson, Arup Associates was formed, this group continues to work under the banner of Arup Architecture following a streamlining of the Arup brand in 2018.

Notable projects

It is best known for its design work for the built environment. Projects to which it has contributed include the Sydney Opera House, which is largely credited with launching Arup into the premier league of engineering consultancies. The BBC and RIBA documentary The Brits who Built the Modern World highlighted Arup's collaboration with architects and described Arup as "the engineering firm which Lord Norman Foster and his peers Lord Richard Rogers, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Sir Michael Hopkins and Sir Terry Farrell most frequently relied upon."

Africa

Arup had its own sports division, Arup Sport, specialising in designing, consulting and structural engineering for sporting facilities such as stadia. This group continues to work under the banner of Arup Architecture following a streamlining of the Arup brand. Many of Arup's modern stadia are designed with a contemporary, distinctive edge and the company strives to revolutionise stadium architecture and performance. For instance, the Bird's Nest Stadium for the 2008 Olympics was complimented for its striking architectural appearance and the City of Manchester Stadium for the 2002 Commonwealth Games has stairless entry to the upper tiers through circular ramps outside the stadium. The most notable stadium projects led by Arup remain the City of Manchester Stadium, Allianz Arena, Beijing National Stadium, Donbass Arena and the Singapore Sports Hub.

Awards

Arup's multidisciplinary sports venue design and engineering scope on the Singapore Sports Hub won the 2013 World Architecture Festival Award in the Future Projects, Leisure Category.
The Casa da Música, Oporto, designed by Arup and Office for Metropolitan Architecture was nominated for the 2007 Stirling Prize.
Arup's work with The Druk White Lotus School, Ladakh, won them Large Consultancy Firm of the Year 2003 at the British Consultants and Construction Bureau – International Expertise Awards, 2003 building on their triple win at the 2002 World Architecture Awards.
Arup was awarded the Worldaware Award for Innovation for its Vawtex air system in Harare International School.
Arup Fire has won the Fire Safety Engineering Design award four times since its creation in 2001. The 2001 inaugural award was won for Arup's contribution to the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK, the world's largest greenhouse. In 2004, the design for London's City Hall was appointed joint winner. In 2005, the Temple Mills Eurostar Depot won. The 2006 winning entry was for Amethyst House, a nine-storey building with an atrium from the ground to the top, in Manchester, UK. More recently, Dr Barbara Lane, Associate Director with Arup, won the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for her outstanding contribution to British engineering on design of structures for fire.
Arup was also awarded Royal Town Planning Institute Consultancy of the year award in 2008.
Mike Glover is the recipient of the 2008 Institution of Structural Engineers' Gold Medal.
Arup was awarded the 2010 Live Design Excellence Award for Theatre Design for the integrated theatre and acoustic team's design for the new Jerome Robbins Theatre, created for Mikhail Baryshnikov and The Wooster Group.
The Evelyn Grace Academy, London designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and Arup won the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize 2011.
Arup was named Tunnel Design Firm of the Year at the 2012 ITA AITES International Tunnelling Awards.

Criticism

Some buildings designed by Arup Group are considered worthy of demolition by the public. For example Scottish Parliament Building and Greyfriars Bus Station were included in "The Dirty Dozen" for the Channel 4 programme Demolition.

Fellows

Arup Fellow is a lifelong honorary title awarded to selected honorary individuals in the firm. It acknowledges the highest design and technical achievements of people, not only within the firm, but also in the industry as a whole. They are considered role models who possess world-class expertise who put theory into effective practice.
The current fellows, as of November 2019, are:

Notable alumni and current staff

A number of its staff have left to form other companies, often with significant parallels with Arup.
In 1976, Edmund Happold and six other engineers left Arup to form Buro Happold in Bath. Mark Whitby left Buro Happold to form Whitby Bird.
In 1999, Chris Wise and Sean Walsh left Arup to form Expedition Engineering in London.