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SB: What's new in structural engineering is now with computers we can analyze complicated things. But projects are still dominated by first costs and maintenance costs. You have to take something complex and boil it down.

The Water Cube is simple. It has just three families of structural members. If you had to manufacture everything differently, it would be possible but cost-prohibitive. We can't defy gravity, and therefore we're always going to build structures that way because loads find the shortest route to the ground.

On the National Stadium, we could have created complex load patterns, but it would have meant you couldn't construct the concrete bowl until the roof was finished, and so it would have taken two more years. With the practicalities of constructing something on a deadline, there's enough going on; we've got enough challenges here. Let's make some simple design solutions.

We wanted the concrete bowl in there and the beams and columns up. Then they're just filling in with staircases and cladding. The bulk of the primary structural engineering was done early on. In any project you want to get the structure up as quick as you can.

AW: Could you talk about China and how Arup became such a presence there?

SB: We've worked in China since before I joined Arup in 1982. Early on we worked on power station projects and developed a reputation in China as reliable and innovative. You can deliver and invent.

It was clear China wanted to do something special with the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest and CCTV. That's what the architects were looking for, too. But a lot of them didn't have experience in China. So we were able to offer to bridge the cultural and business divide. So the projects have mainly been as a design consortium with the architects.

I also think you might say it was our time. We're a company that was focused on sustainable design solutions for decades, since the 1960s. Now we find ourselves in something that is fashionable — or maybe that's the wrong word, but everyone is aware of designing with the least amount of material for the most benefit.

When the Olympics were handed to the Chinese, we were really ascending. We were in the right place at the right time.

AW: How do some of the famous designers you've worked with, such as Herzog & de Meuron, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, Richard Rogers, and Daniel Libeskind, differ in approach or style?

SB: The only thing in common is they're all different. Herzog & de Meuron are good listeners and we had a lot of discussion. They also make lots of models and lots of things are deliberated on visually.

I spent some time in Frank Gehry's studio and they do that, too. The attention to detail is common to all great architects.

With [Danish firm] 3XNielsen, they had a very different method. It was more of a Lego-style approach of putting the building together. They would take the client's program and its requirements and define them by color and talk about how to put them together. But they really engaged the owner about how to put the program together. I've worked with architects who take a client's brief and hand it back to them down the road as a finished design.

We're lucky to have relationships with these architects where we're carrying knowledge from project to project on how each other works. I'd worked with Herzog & de Meuron on Allianz Arena [in Munich] and we learned a lot about each other. There was a trust and understanding and belief and respect that puts us in good stead.

AW: Arup has been a design partner on many of the signature projects we've talked about. Is it true that because of sustainability and integrated design, engineers are now more often incorporated early into the design process?

SB: As a philosophy, when I was in college, everyone wanted to join Arup because of how the founder [Ove Arup] talked about architecture: that the whole was stronger than the parts. We've been doing integrated design forever. Even in our office, engineers sit with planners and other specialists. You just sort of create this mixture of people with lots of different experiences and expertise but a common aim to work in an integrated way.

In the industry, people have realized that the atmosphere of the '70s, where you produce a design and hand it to somebody to go build it, just was very problematic. Today people use phrases like sustainability and life-cycle costing, but basically what they want is to make intelligent decisions. They haven't been able to do that in the past, but now they can.

Now if a client wants to build an office and lease it to someone, a cynic might say it won't be sustainable because there's no incentive to the owner. What the developer wants is not the minimum cost but the maximum amount of lettable floor area to the cost. If you can take the mechanical systems out of the risers, you don't need to build the risers. The questions developers are asking are different from ten years ago. And now there's often a policy incentive, like getting permitting for LEED Gold projects streamlined, as in San Francisco.

Today you wouldn't buy a refrigerator without a good energy rating. People are more educated and informed. They have a higher expectation. They care about the water usage in the building and their footprint. They've got children and they want the world to be there for them.

As an industry, we're forced to consider making intelligent choices now, whatever they might be. Fifteen years ago we might have felt like preachers. It just isn't the case anymore. We're working with people asking for the extreme in every case. The expectations in every area are just so much higher. People here in California are saying, "Why can't our building be naturally ventilated?"

All an engineer is is a solution looking for a problem. Once we understand the problem, we can solve it. That's always the case. People want to build taller and taller buildings, and they blow in the wind, and people feel queasy, so we've built dampers. The buildings are cheaper, they've got less steel. With all these things, we've found it's a good time to be Arup. What we've been practicing is what everybody wants.

Brian Libby is a Portland, Oregon-based freelance writer who has also published in Metropolis, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Architectural Record.

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SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE Stairs follow the slope of the stadium's secondary steel structural elements. Photo: Martin Saunders Photography Extra Large Image Horizontal trusses intersect at many locations as they span from the perimeter columns to the central ring. Photo: Courtesy Arup Extra Large Image SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE Stadium structural framing plan drawing. Image: Arup Extra Large Image Detail drawing of Bird's Nest structural node. Image: Arup Extra Large Image Arup also provided engineering services for the adjacent Water Cube (Beijing National Aquatics Center). Photo: Ben McMillan Extra Large Image The China Central Television (CCTV) Headquarters building, designed by OMA, is another high-profile Beijing project engineered by Arup. Photo: Ole Scheeren Extra Large Image   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.