42 FEATURE
Boundary Crossing Facility – Client: Aecom / Highways Department Architect: Aedas/Rogers Stirk Harbour (RSH) (Images courtesy of Rogers Stirk Harbour and Aedas)
Skilled teams The firm calls this approach “Enginuity”. BuroHappold’s people-flow specialists can move a million people across a desert with ease. Its experts look into ways of making facades that can absorb pollution. They can put up overnight structures with acoustics suitable for the purpose, using only wood, rope and sheer hard work. The firm’s economists and planners come up with flexible strategies. Backing the BuroHappold approach is 20 years of experience in digital parametric design and Building Information Modelling (BIM).This enables the firm to come up with elegant yet buildable designs that serve the purposes of its clients precisely. One such design was for Zaha Hadid’s hotel tower in the City of Dreams casino-resort in Macau, which required 2,500 unique steel joints. The use of parametric design and BIM technologies allows BuroHappold to tackle structural complexity. It’s one example of how the firm is inventive in adopting cutting-edge technologies into everyday workflows.
Steelwork completed for prefabricated roof module, awaiting cladding, services and ceiling finish, before being transported to site from Zhongshan.
Future focused BuroHappold sets out to stretch the boundaries of any brief in creating unique, environmentally friendly spaces that help find answers to the most complex questions of cultural and social change, and which allow communities to thrive and progress. The firm’s integrated approach to sustainable design is meant to provide optimal building performance and maximise an asset’s value over its life. It makes buildings sustainable by making the best use of the sites they occupy, by designing them to consume the least possible amount of nonrenewable energy, by using in constructing them products that do the least possible damage to the environment, and by creating the best possible surroundings inside.
Kai Tak Criuse Terminal Building – Client: Dragages Hong Kong Architect: Fosters and Partners (Image courtesy of ROF Media)
BuroHappold’s ability to take a client’s specifications and devise vigorous, inspirational architecture has made the firm a partner that governments, investors and construction companies the world over have come to trust and value over 40 productive years.