| In 1999 he co-founded his own company, the engineering design
firm Expedition, after 20 years at Arup's. There he became
its youngest director in 1992, and was later appointed one
of 5 Board Directors responsible for a multidisciplinary design
office of over 500 engineers and support staff. He has worked closely with leading
architects Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, among others,
on award-winning projects throughout the world. His team’s engineering has twice
won the Construction Industry Building of the Year award, and
also the RIBA Stirling Prize for Architecture. Key projects
include the Commerzbank HQ in Frankfurt (Europe’s tallest
building and the first green skyscraper), the slightly wobbly
Millennium Bridge in London, the American Air Museum in Duxford,
and the 290m Barcelona Telecoms Tower. With his new practice
he has projects in such exotic locations as Antarctica, Barcelona
and Stockton on Tees.
Richard Rogers says "Chris has
always been more comfortable with the media than the majority
of engineers, memorably putting a roof over the Coliseum which
slid back like a Porsche’s,
and recreating Caesar's bridge over the Rhine (actually the
Tyne) for the BBC. He has recently reconstructed and flown
a human-powered replica of the world’s first airship
for BBC’s “Building the Impossible”. Through
the media, with BBC, Nova and Discovery he has helped give
his profession a public face it lacked throughout much of the
20th century. "
In March 1998 he was appointed
the first Professor of Creative Design at Imperial College
and he has broadened his work there to become advocate for
a new engineering curriculum, and to help found the innovative
Constructionarium. In November 1998 he was awarded the distinction
of Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts
- only the second structural engineer to be honoured in this
way. He has also been honoured as Hon Fellow of the Royal
Institution of British Architects, and Fellow of the Royal
Academy of Engineering. He now sits on the Design Council
of Great Britain, and is director of the RSA’s RDI
Summer School. Chris is Davenport Professor of Architecture
and Design at Yale School of Architecture.
“Chris thinks like an artist and acts like an engineer.
He is in fact an engineer out of the grand Victorian mould:
in a discipline where, necessarily, safety comes first, Chris
still manages to be a visionary and a risk-taker.” (Richard
Rogers)
“You can always tell the pioneers by the arrows in their
backs” (Anon) | 
