Bill Addis

I wanted to like this book, but ultimately it was quite disappointing. There are too few books on the modern-day engineering heroes (certainly compared to the world of architecture), but to be of any use they need to be inspiring, exciting, able to show where genius lies.

Ted Happold was perhaps too much of a jack-of-all-trades. He was as successful for his political and project management ability as for his technical skill, and this makes him difficult to portray. His greatest technical show more interests, lightweight tensile and gridshell structures, were an important development in late 20th century structural engineering. However, most of Happold's published writing was non-technical, with very little engineering research, so he doesn't compare well with true structural engineering greats such as Jorg Schlaich or Fritz Leonhardt.

Happold's main claim to fame was setting up his firm Buro Happold when he left Ove Arup and Partners, and what this book does have going for it are numerous photos and descriptions of Happold projects before and after his time at Arup. Nonetheless, there is little detail on the actual structural engineering (this book was written by an architect, so it's no surprise). show less