1.
Heron Tower
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The Heron Tower is a commercial skyscraper in London. The Heron Tower is located on Bishopsgate and is bordered by Camomile Street, Outwich Street, construction of the building started in 2007 and was completed in 2011. The tower initially struggled to attract tenants in the depths of the Great Recession, but is now fully let. Designed by architects Kohn Pedersen Fox, the height of the Heron Tower was planned to be only 183 m, identical to that of Tower 42 and it attracted some controversy when first announced due to its proximity to St Pauls Cathedral when viewed from Waterloo Bridge. English Heritage was notably vocal in expressing concerns, a public inquiry was subsequently held, the outcome of which was decided by deputy prime minister John Prescott, who ruled in the developers favour. The tower was given approval for construction in July 2002. Three years later, the project had yet to begin construction, in September 2005 the Heron Property Corporation submitted a planning application to increase the height of its approved building. Herons revised plans now proposed a 202-metre tall tower topped by a 28-metre mast, although the design was largely identical to the previous scheme, the towers crown and southern façades were refined. In January 2006, the project was approved by the City of London Corporation. In February 2013 it was revealed in The Times that backers of the Heron Tower included Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd, the Heron Tower was designed to feature a concierge-style entrance and reception area, incorporating a 70,000 litre aquarium containing around 1,200 fish. A bar-restaurant called The Drift occupies part of the ground and first floors, there is a restaurant and sky bar leased to Sushi Samba and Duck & Waffle, both open to the public, on floors 38–40. Situated 175 metres above the City and accessed by lifts from a dedicated entrance on Bishopsgate. The building uses photovoltaic cells to generate energy, allowing it to achieve a BREEAM rating of excellent in January 2010. In March 2007, it was confirmed that Heron had signed a deal with the State General Reserve Fund of Oman to provide the equity for the development. Following the appointment of Skanska, the firm that erected the gherkin-shaped 30 St Mary Axe building, as main contractor, full construction began in April 2008, with foundation piles and steel rebar cages being installed, while the first tower crane was erected in June. In August a second crane was erected, followed by a third. In early October, the first steel beams appeared on site, in November, steelwork temporarily finished, and concrete was poured for the base slabs. Steelwork recommenced on 19 January 2009, the speed of construction then increased, with floors being constructed in sets of two, with each set taking a planned fortnight to construct
2.
30 St Mary Axe
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30 St Mary Axe is a commercial skyscraper in Londons primary financial district, the City of London. It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004, after plans to build the 92-storey Millennium Tower were dropped,30 St Mary Axe was designed by Norman Foster and Arup Group and it was erected by Skanska, with construction commencing in 2001. The building has become a feature of London and is one of the citys most widely recognised examples of contemporary architecture. The building stands on the sites of the Baltic Exchange, the headquarters of a global marketplace for ship sales and shipping information. On 10 April 1992 the Provisional IRA detonated a bomb close to the Exchange, the Exchange Hall was a celebrated fixture of the ship trading market. The Baltic Exchange and the Chamber of Shipping sold the land to Trafalgar House in 1995, the salvaged material was eventually sold for £800,000 and moved to Tallinn, Estonia, where it awaits reconstruction as the centrepiece of the citys commercial sector. In 1996, Trafalgar House submitted plans for the Millennium Tower, the Gherkin nickname was applied to the current building at least as long ago as 1999, referring to that plans highly unorthodox layout and appearance. On 23 August 2000, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott granted planning permission to construct a much larger than the old Exchange on the site. The site was special because it needed development, was not on any of the sight lines, the plan for the site was to reconstruct the Baltic Exchange. GMW Architects proposed a new rectangular building surrounding a restored exchange—the square shape would have the type of floor plan that banks liked. This gave the architect a free hand in the design, it eliminated the restrictive demands for a large, capital-efficient, money-making building, Swiss Res low level plan met the planning authoritys desire to maintain Londons traditional streetscape with its relatively narrow streets. The mass of the Swiss Re tower was not too imposing, like Barclays Banks former City headquarters in Lombard Street, the idea was that the passer-by in neighbouring streets would be nearly oblivious to the towers existence until directly underneath it. The building was constructed by Skanska, completed in December 2003, the primary occupant of the building is Swiss Re, a global reinsurance company, which had the building commissioned as the head office for its UK operation. The building uses energy-saving methods, which allow it to use half the power that a tower would typically consume. Gaps in each floor create six shafts that serve as a ventilation system for the entire building. The shafts create a giant double glazing effect, air is sandwiched between two layers of glazing and insulates the office space inside. Architects promote double glazing in residential houses, which avoids the inefficient convection of heat across the narrow gap between the panes, but the tower exploits this effect. The shafts pull warm air out of the building during the summer, the shafts also allow sunlight to pass through the building, making the work environment more pleasing, and keeping the lighting costs down
3.
Lloyd's building
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The Lloyds building is the home of the insurance institution Lloyds of London. It is located on the site of East India House in Lime Street, in Londons main financial district. The building is an example of radical Bowellism architecture in which the services for the building. Twenty-five years after completion in 1986, the building received Grade I listing in 2011 and it is said by Historic England to be universally recognised as one of the key buildings of the modern epoch. The first Lloyds building had been built on site in 1928. In 1958, due to expansion of the market, a new building was constructed across the road at 51 Lime Street, Lloyds now occupied the Heysham Building and the Cooper Building. By the 1970s Lloyds had again outgrown these two buildings and proposed to extend the Cooper Building, in 1978, the corporation ran an architectural competition which attracted designs from practices such as Foster Associates, Arup and I. M. Pei. The 1928 buildings entrance at 12 Leadenhall Street was preserved and forms a rather incongruous attachment to the 1986 structure, demolition of the 1958 building commenced in 2004 to make way for the 26-storey Willis Building. The current Lloyds building was designed by the architect company Richard Rogers and Partners, the 12 glass lifts were the first of their kind in the United Kingdom. Like the Pompidou Centre, the building was influenced by the work of Archigram in the 1950s and 1960s. The building consists of three towers and three service towers around a central, rectangular space. Its core is the large Underwriting Room on the ground floor, also on the first floor is loss book which for 300 years has had entries of significant losses entered by quill. The Underwriting Room is overlooked by galleries, forming a 60 metres high atrium lit naturally through a huge barrel-vaulted glass roof, the first four galleries open onto the atrium space, and are connected by escalators through the middle of the structure. The higher floors are glassed in and can only be reached via the exterior lifts, the Lloyds building is 88 metres to the roof, with 14 floors. On top of each service core stand the cleaning cranes, increasing the height to 95.10 metres. Modular in plan, each floor can be altered by addition or removal of partitions, in 2008 the Twentieth Century Society called for the building to be Grade I listed and in 2011 it was granted this status. The building was owned by Dublin-based real estate firm Shelbourne Development Group. In July 2013 it was sold to the Chinese company Ping An Insurance in a £260 million deal, use as a location in films Guardians of the Galaxy The Anomaly Climbing Great Buildings The Ghost Writer Burn Up, TV series Ashes to Ashes, pilot episode Mamma Mia
4.
Monument to the Great Fire of London
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It stands at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill,202 ft tall and 202 ft from the spot in Pudding Lane where the Great Fire started on 2 September 1666. Another monument, the Golden Boy of Pye Corner, marks the point near Smithfield where the fire was stopped. Constructed between 1671 and 1677, it was built on the site of St. Margarets, Fish Street, the Monument comprises a fluted Doric column built of Portland stone topped with a gilded urn of fire. It was designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke and its height marks its distance from the site of the shop of Thomas Farriner, the kings baker, where the Great Fire began. The top of the Monument is reached by a winding staircase of 311 steps. A mesh cage was added in the century at the top to prevent people jumping off. Three sides of the base carry inscriptions in Latin, the one on the south side describes actions taken by King Charles II following the fire. The one on the east describes how the Monument was started and brought to perfection, inscriptions on the north side describe how the fire started, how much damage it caused, and how it was eventually extinguished. The nearest London Underground station is Monument and it is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled monument. Christopher Wren, as surveyor-general of the Kings Works, was asked to submit a design, Wren worked with Robert Hooke on the design of the monument. It was not until 1671 that the City Council approved the design and it was two more years before the inscription was set in place. Commemorating — with a disregard for the truth — the fact that London rises again. three short years complete that which was considered the work of ages. The real contention came with the problem of what type of ornament to have at the top, the total cost of the monument was £13,450 11s 9d. of which £11,300 was paid to the mason-contractor Joshua Marshall. The Edinburgh-born writer James Boswell visited the Monument in 1763 to climb the 311 steps to what was then the highest viewpoint in London. Halfway up, he suffered an attack, but persevered and made it to the top. The area around the base of the column, Monument Street, was pedestrianised in 2006 in a £790,000 street improvement scheme, the Monument closed in July 2007 for an 18-month, £4.5 million refurbishment project and re-opened in February 2009. Between 1 and 2 October 2011, a Live Music Sculpture created especially for the Monument by British composer Samuel Bordoli was performed 18 times during the weekend. This was the first occasion that music had ever been heard inside the structure, Wren and Hooke built the monument to double-up as a scientific instrument
5.
Postmodern architecture
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The movement was given a doctrine by the architect and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in his 1966 book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. The style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s, particularly in the work of Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore, in the late 1990s it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, neo-classicism and deconstructivism. The architect and architectural historian Robert Venturi led the attack in 1966 in his book, Complexity, … I welcome the problems and exploit the uncertainties. … I like elements which are rather than pure, compromising rather than clean. … I am for messy vitality over obvious unity, … I prefer both-and to either-or, black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white. … An architecture of complexity and contradiction must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion, Venturis second book, Learning from Las Vegas, co-authored with his wife, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, further developed his argument against modernism. He urged architects take into consideration and to celebrate the architecture in a place. He argued that ornamental and decorative elements accommodate existing needs for variety, Rossi insisted that cities be rebuilt in ways that preserved their historical fabric and local traditions. Similar ideas were and projects were put forward at the Venice Biennale in 1980, the call for a post-modern style was joined by Christian de Portzamparc in France and Ricardo Bofill in Spain, and in Japan by Arata Isozaki. Robert Venturi was both a prominent theorist of postmodernism and an architect who buildings illustrated his ideas, after studying at the American Academy in Rome, he worked in the offices of the modernists Eero Saarinen Louis Kahn until 1958, and then became a professor architecture at Yale University. One of his first buildings was the Guild House in Philadelphia and these two houses became symbols of the postmodern movement. He went on to design, in the 1960s and 1970s, Michael Graves designed two of the most prominent buildings in the postmodern style, the Portland Building and the Denver Public Library. The building has since added to the National Register of Historic Places. The most famous work of architect Charles Moore is the Piazza dItalia in New Orleans, drawing upon the Spanish Revival architecture of the city hall, Moore designed the Beverly Hills Civic Center in a mixture of Spanish Revival, Art Deco and Post-Modern styles. It includes courtyards, colonnades, promenades, and buildings, with open and semi-enclosed spaces, stairways and balconies. Philip Johnson began his career as a pure modernist, in 1935 he co-authored the famous catalog of the Museum of Modern Art exposition on the International Style, and studied with Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer at Harvard. His Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, inspired b a similar house by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became an icon of the modernist movement and he worked with Mies on another iconic modernist project, the Seagrams Building in New York City. However, his buildings in the 1970, such as IDS Center in Minneapolis and Pennzoil Place in Houston were massive, sober
6.
High-tech architecture
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High-tech architecture appeared as revamped modernism, an extension of those previous ideas helped by even more technological advances. This category serves as a bridge between modernism and post-modernism, however, there remain gray areas as to one category ends. In the 1980s, high-tech architecture became more difficult to distinguish from post-modern architecture, some of its themes and ideas were later absorbed into the style of Neo-Futurism art and architectural movement. In buildings such as the Pompidou Centre, this idea of revealed structure is taken to the extreme, in this case, the use of structural steel is a stylistic or aesthetic matter. Early high-tech buildings were referred to by historian Reyner Banham as serviced sheds due to their exposure of mechanical services in addition to the structure, most of these early examples used exposed structural steel as their material of choice. As hollow structural sections had become widely available in the early 1970s. Buildings in this style were constructed mainly in North America. It is deeply connected with what is called the Second School of Chicago which emerged after World War II, the main content is that the technological kind of construction, mostly with steel and glass, is expressed in a formal independent way to gain aesthetic qualities from it. The first proper example are the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments by German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, potter, New York. —found in industrial catalogues and putting these to use in residential settings. The foreword to the book by architect Emilio Ambasz, former curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art, put the trend in historical context. As a result of the publicity and popularity of the book, the style became known as High-Tech. In 1979, the term high-tech appeared for the first time in a New Yorker magazine cartoon showing a woman berating her husband for not being enough, Youre middle-, middle-. But credit should go to a shop on 64th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York, Ad Hoc Housewares, which opened in 1977, for marketing these objects to a residential audience before anyone else. The book went on to be reprinted in England, France, and Japan, high-tech architecture was, in some ways, a response to growing disillusionment with modern architecture. The realization of Le Corbusiers urban development plans led to cities with monotonous, enthusiasm for economic building led to extremely low-quality finishes, with subsequent degradation countering a now-waning aesthetic novelty. High-tech architecture created a new aesthetic in contrast with modern architecture. In High Tech, The Industrial Style and Source Book for The Home, when discussing the high-tech aesthetic and this humour so aptly demonstrates the rebellious attitude. A prime example of this is the Centre Pompidou in Paris and this highlights one of the aims of high-tech architecture, to show the technical elements of the building by externalizing them
7.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
8.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
9.
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
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Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners is a British architectural firm, founded in 1977 and originally known as the Richard Rogers Partnership. Its main offices are located in the Leadenhall Building, London, previously they were at the Thames Wharf Studios. In its various incarnations it is known for important buildings including Lloyds building and the Millennium Dome in London. The firms principal offices are located at Leadenhall Building in London and it also maintains offices in Shanghai and Sydney. As of March 2016 the firm has thirteen partners, including Richard Rogers, Graham Stirk, the practice is run with a profit-share scheme and a limit on the directors salaries in comparison with those of the lowest paid in the office. The practice is focused on sustainability, urban regeneration and social awareness. Celebration of public space and the encouragement of public activities is also a recurring theme and it is owned by a charitable trust, ensuring that no individual owns any share in its value and preventing private trading and inheritance of shares. The practice divides its profits between all of the staff and their charities, according to publicly declared principles. Soon after the Pompidou Centre in Paris was opened in 1977, Richard Rogers formed the Richard Rogers Partnership, if I want to leave something to the future, it has to be able to change – but retain something of the ethos that we built up over 50 years. In November 2015 Rogers Stirk Harbour created five new partners including Tracy Meller who became their first woman partner, founding partner Mike Davies stepped down. In 2006 the practice was awarded the Stirling Prize for their Madrid-Barajas Airport, in 2008, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners was awarded the Manser Medal for Houses and Housing, given for the best one-off house designed by an architect in the UK. In 2009 it was awarded the Stirling Prize for Maggies Centre in London and it won the RIBA National Award 2015 for NEO Bankside luxury apartments in London and was subsequently shortlisted for the Stirling Prize for the second time. This list contains projects from the beginning of the partnership in 1977 through to the present day, for earlier work by Richard Rogers, Team 4, Richard and Su Rogers and Piano + Rogers, see the Richard Rogers page. Rogers first work came when he co-founded Team 4 in 1963 with Su Brumwell, Team 4’s first project was Creek Vean, a residential property in Cornwall. He then established a partnership with Su Rogers, John Young, by July 1971 Rogers had won a design competition to build the Pompidou Centre in Paris with co-partner with Italian architect Renzo Piano. He is a winner of the RIBA Gold Medal, the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the RIBA Stirling Prize, Ivan Harbour Ivan Harbour joined Richard Rogers Partnership in 1985, in 1993 he was made a senior director. In 2007 the practice changed from Richard Rogers Partnership to Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Harbour led the design team for the Senedd, Terminal 4 Barajas Airport, Madrid, the Law Courts in Antwerp and Bordeaux and the European Court of Human Rights building in Strasbourg. Graham Stirk Graham Stirk joined Richard Rogers Partnership in 1983 and was made a director in 1995
10.
Arup Group
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The firm has over 14,000 staff based in 92 offices across 42 countries, and is present in Africa, the Americas, Australasia, East Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Arup has participated in projects in over 160 countries, Arup is owned by trusts, the beneficiaries of which are Arups past and present employees, who receive a share of the firms operating profit each year. The firm was founded in London in 1946, as the Ove N. Arup Consulting Engineers by Ove Arup and 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 1963, together with the architect Philip Dowson, Arup Associates was formed, in 1970, the firm reformed as Ove Arup & Partners. It is best known for its work for the built environment. Projects to which it has contributed include the Sydney Opera House,3, Nevada, USA Druk White Lotus School was built to survive the Ladakhi weather. Kingdom Centre, The third tallest skyscraper in Saudi Arabia, and the second tallest in Riyadh and this group continues to work under the banner of Arup Associates following a streamlining of the Arup brand. Many of Arups modern stadia are designed with a contemporary, distinctive edge, 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. Arups multidisciplinary sports venue design and engineering scope on the Singapore Sports Hub won the 2013 World Architecture Festival Award in the Future Projects, the Casa da Música, Oporto, designed by Arup and Office for Metropolitan Architecture was nominated for the 2007 Stirling Prize. 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 Arups contribution to the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK, in 2004, the design for Londons 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. Arup was also awarded Royal Town Planning Institute Consultancy of the award in 2008. Mike Glover is the recipient of the 2008 Institution of Structural Engineers Gold Medal, 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, 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 and they are considered role models who possess world-class expertise who put theory into effective practice. Sir Ove Nyquist Arup, structural engineer and philosopher, founder of the company, recipient of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture 1966, peter Dunican, structural engineer, first chairman of Ove Arup Partnership, and President of the Institution of Structural Engineers in 1977 and 1978. Sir Jack Zunz, civil engineer, and principal designer of the Sydney Opera House
