From a handful of engineers in a Bath townhouse to 3,700 people working across the globe, Buro Happold has spent 50 years shaping extraordinary places. As the engineering and design consultancy marks its milestone anniversary, its connection to the city where it all began remains as strong as ever. Words by Charlotte Carter
Engineering is, at its best, an art grounded in social responsibility’, so said the late Sir Edmund ‘Ted’ Happold, whose expertise and passions spanned all three disciplines. Despite Ted’s passing three decades ago his greatest legacy, founding and leading global consultancy firm Buro Happold, is marking 50 years since it first sprung into existence in a small townhouse office in central Bath.
It’s just possible that many in Bath’s busy hustle and bustle are not aware that some of the world’s most celebrated buildings and masterplans were developed here, behind the doors of an innovative engineering and design consultancy that was founded in Bath in 1976. During the intervening five decades, Buro Happold has had an enduring impact on the local community and built environment, and is one of the city’s largest private-sector employers. The firm’s engineers have worked on some of Bath’s most treasured buildings including Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths, as well as major regional regeneration developments and the masterplanning behind them. Local connections run deep.
On the global stage, Buro Happold has offices in 37 locations across the world, employing 3,700 people who have delivered projects on every continent, and worked with organisations such as the United Nations, UNESCO and C40 Cities. The firm’s name is linked to iconic structures and major developments the world over. However, for Buro Happold, all roads lead back to its Bath headquarters where the firm’s humble beginnings originate.
Early homes
In 1976, Sir Ted Happold was already a well-established and respected engineer when he was invited to become Professor of Architecture and Engineering Design at the University of Bath. As part of the move, he would start up his own practice. Described as a man with charisma, great energy and self-belief, he quickly persuaded a team of seven fellow engineers to join him in Bath and become founding partners of Buro Happold. So great was their confidence in Ted’s vision that they followed, even though Ted was the only one guaranteed a salary by the move.
Their earliest home was at 14 Gay Street, where the first job was to build their own tables on which to draw – there were no design computers back then. The building was run-down, and the team’s early days were characterised by swiping away the plaster and wood shavings that fell onto their drawings as they worked amidst a full-scale renovation. There followed a stint on Quiet Street and Trim Street before Buro Happold settled at Camden Mill on Lower Bristol Road, eventually expanding into the neighbouring Bayer Building. For 38 years, this remained the cultural home and headquarters of the growing global enterprise, until 2026.
Bath calling
From the start, Buro Happold’s focus was on delivering engineering solutions that are better for places, people and the planet with a commitment to ‘touch the earth lightly’, an approach propounded by Ted Happold himself. Bath Office Director and Engineer Phil Lines, who joined the firm in 2003, says that Buro Happold’s Bath office is unique.
“Over the past 23 years I’ve delivered projects across the country and the globe all while based out of our Bath office, which I think makes working here a little different,” he explains. “Not many consultancies based out of the South West operate quite so globally, or at this scale. For instance, our collaboration on the London 2012 Olympic Stadium and football stadia for the likes of Arsenal and Tottenham were designed in Bath, and it was engineers and specialists based here that delivered the incredible shallow dome for the Louvre Museum, Abu Dhabi.”
The pioneering Louvre Abu Dhabi’s intricately latticed dome makes it an iconic world destination. Serving as a complex filter to the bright desert sun, it is a masterpiece in geometry. Working closely with architects Ateliers Jean Nouvel, it took over a year to engineer the solution to support nine layers of cladding across a 180-metre dome so that shafts of light burst through and create patterns on the galleries below.
A world which sees art and engineering as divided is not seeing the world as a whole.
Sir Ted Happold
“Buro Happold’s Bath office has been likened to a ‘teaching hospital’,” Phil adds. “We help engineers grow, learn and experiment in a highly collaborative environment surrounded by world-class engineers and specialists. If you look at the leadership of our global offices, many of them started out in Bath. We’re not just a design office, we’re an incubator for talent, if you like, and will continue to be; that’s our culture.”
Global footsteps
Buro Happold’s earliest projects sent founding partners to locations across the world, paving the way to a perpetual stream of landmark development work.
Among early international projects the Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City in Kuwait was an engineering feat, sculpting an additional 180km of new coastline development space to support over 100,000 residents. Masterplanned and engineered to thrive in harmony with its environment, the naturally flushing waterway preserves marine ecosystems. More recently bringing nature indoors, in 2018 Buro Happold worked with architects on Singapore’s Jewel Changi Airport to create the tallest indoor waterfall by engineering the world’s largest gridshell to enclose the complex. The innovative, 6,000-tonne glass and steel roof structure spans more than 200 metres at its widest point and is almost column free, an impressive sight for passengers. Across Europe, Buro Happold’s local offices have worked with world-leading architects to deliver iconic buildings and cultural venues such as the Danish National Opera House.
“A colleague once described Buro Happold as having a ‘disproportionate share of the best work in the market’,” said Phil, “I think that still rings true today. We’re working on some of the best buildings and placemaking projects in the UK and globally.”
On home soil, Buro Happold’s engineers have brought their expertise to create or preserve some of the nation’s most treasured buildings. For example, working with architects at Foster + Partners, reimagining the British Museum’s Great Court with a remarkable glass and steel roof, the largest covered courtyard in Europe. It floods the space with light and gathers the museum’s Georgian buildings under one spectacular roof. From heritage projects to the Millennium Dome, Buro Happold engineered the Dome’s lightweight tensile structure, reimagined again some years later when the firm’s engineers and architects Populous designed the O2 Arena inside the Dome.
The firm is also part of some of the UK’s most significant infrastructure and regeneration developments. For over a quarter of a century it was at the forefront of restoration and redevelopment work for the iconic Battersea Power Station, winning gongs for the strong sustainability focus.
Back in the region, the placemaking legacy continues. Since initial masterplanning over a decade ago, Partner and South West Market Lead, Claire Smith, has led Buro Happold’s crucial role in regenerating the University of Bristol’s flagship Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus. The scheme’s new, sustainable Sloane Robinson Building opened last month, unlocking a long-unused location in the heart of Bristol, next to Temple Meads Station and the Floating Harbour, overcoming flood risks and other complex challenges stemming from the site’s former industrial use.
“We’re extremely proud and excited to see this project completed and the former industrial site transformed, as well as the catalysing impact it’s having on development across this neglected quarter of the city,” says Claire. “Historically, the cities of Bath and Bristol have turned their backs on the River Avon, but we’re now in a very exciting period of design where they are starting to turn back and face it.”
Claire has collaborated on many major regional projects, including regeneration of North and South Quays in Bath, and sits on the BaNES Future Ambition Board.
Protecting cultural heritage
Within the BA postcode, a scavenger hunt of projects touched by Buro Happold’s engineers makes a busy day out, though the involvement may be imperceptible to the casual passerby.
Not many visit the city without glimpsing Bath Abbey. The floor has over 8,500 burials beneath it, many of which had started to collapse making the floor structurally unstable. Buro Happold worked with the Abbey as part of the Heritage Lottery Funded Footprint Project to replace the floor and refurbish the vaults to expand facilities. As part of the project, heat was recovered from the city’s natural hot springs for a sustainable, underfloor heating system, once the team had solved the corrosion and health risks.
The project’s success led to another, to provide sustainable energy to heat the neighbouring Roman Baths visitor attraction, providing both carbon and cost savings for years to come. The sustainability focus continues into the surrounding countryside, such as creating the striking treetops walkway at Westonbirt Arboretum.
Families entranced at The Egg Theatre also unknowingly experience Buro Happold’s work in action. When the Theatre Royal sought to transform the Grade II listed building into a space for children, young people and their families, the Bath team provided an innovative structural solution to support the egg-shaped auditorium, along with multidisciplinary support to bring the much-loved performance space to life.
“We’ve been truly privileged to collaborate on so many of Bath’s heritage sites, schools and culturally invaluable buildings, as well as forge long-standing relationships with the people and organisations that keep the city running,” says Phil. “Bath is a beautiful place to live and work, and as engineers we really appreciate working in such a beautiful and deeply cultural setting.”
This echoes Sir Ted’s own sentiment, that: “A world which sees art and engineering as divided is not seeing the world as a whole.”
Supporting communities
Buro Happold’s relationship with its home city runs deep and not without recognition. Claire, who has been with the firm since 2001, has forged close relationships with many Bath institutions, including the University of Bath which awarded her an honorary Doctorate to recognise her contribution. Close ties remain, such as through the annual Ted Happold Prize for the University’s final year joint architecture and engineering projects.
“It’s a privilege to have a strong connection to the city and to really feel part of it,” Claire reflects. “I think engineers at Buro Happold share a similar attitude towards what we’re here to do, which is not just our day job, but to find ways to share our expertise and contribute to improving our communities.
“Our young engineers, particularly, put a huge amount of energy into community-based projects. We run a programme called Share Our Skills, through which we have supported community projects across the globe, such as conservation in Madagascar and connecting remote communities in Rwanda.”
We’re not just a design office, we’re an incubator for talent, if you like, and will continue to be; that’s our culture.
Phil Lines, Bath Office Director and Engineer
This ethos goes hand-in-hand with giving back locally, like building a new community bike shed in Widcombe. Anyone strolling down Bath’s waterfront in a recent December may also have noticed 24 glowing windows at Camden Mill numbered in a Christmas countdown. The four-storey Advent Calendar became a collaboration with Bath Rugby Foundation as local businesses sponsored windows, each celebrating a squad number, while the generous community supported an Advent Window Raffle. The 2025 Christmas season helped raise £15,000 for the Foundation.
A new low-carbon home
Despite housing the region’s tallest Advent Calendar, sustained growth, changing work practices, and Buro Happold’s sustainability and carbon ambitions meant that by 2025, Camden Mill was no longer the right home for the business. Coinciding with the firm’s 50th year, in 2026 the Bath office started a new chapter with Phil Lines overseeing its first move in almost four decades, albeit not too far away.
He said: “Camden Mill is a beautiful building steeped in heritage, but it was no longer the workplace for us. We needed more open floor plans to create a truly collaborative environment for our engineers and where we could stand by our sustainability commitments.
“Leaving Bath was never in question, we’re a major contributor to the region’s STEM economy and it’s home for so many of our people. So, we took a bold move and seized the opportunity for a low-carbon, sustainability-led retrofit in the heart of Bath which will serve us for years to come.”
In January 2026, the firm relocated temporarily into Pinesgate East, slightly further down Lower Bristol Road, while works are undertaken to the neighbouring Pinesgate West building to create Buro Happold’s permanent new home. Working with architect AWW and landlord Watkin Property Ventures, Buro Happold is engaging in a back-to-frame retrofit of Pinesgate West targeting top sustainability certifications as well as meeting demanding carbon targets when in use.
“It’s an exciting move for us,” says Phil, “and feels fitting that the first step has come during this milestone year. We’re looking forward to moving into our new home in 2027 and renewing our commitment to the city.”
Living values
Gazing into the future, the strong values of Buro Happold’s innovative founder, Ted Happold, set the firm in good stead for the priorities of tomorrow’s value-led businesses. The 50th anniversary provided an opportunity to reflect on just how much.
“Many of our people didn’t know Ted, including myself,” said Phil, “but his values live on in the firm. He believed passionately about using materials responsibly, coining the phrase ‘touching the earth lightly’, an ethos we still live by but more often termed ‘sustainability’. He believed all our projects should leave a place better than we find it by contributing to and supporting local economies and improving the lives of those who live and work around them, what we would now call ‘social value’.
“And Ted prioritised looking after his own employees, providing an environment in which to grow and learn, as well as our workplace providing a café and social hub to ensure we’re well fed and looked after – what you might term ‘employee wellbeing’. He was well-known for his belief that ‘the best work is done by the most diverse group of talents’, which is true recognition of the value of inclusion and diversity. So perhaps we all know him better than we thought.”
Fifty years in, the stage is being set at Pinesgate West for Buro Happold’s new ‘incubator for talent’ to support and inspire our engineers of the future for the next 50 years and beyond, right here, in the centre of the world heritage city of Bath.
To mark Buro Happold’s milestone year, the firm has compiled a new book: Buro Happold – Engineering, design and advisory, 50 years of courage and care, published by Lund Humphries, exploring the achievements of its founder and highlighting the firm’s innovations through 50 key projects. Find it at: lundhumphries.com