The Benefits of Good Structural Engineering

摘要

This issue contains descriptions of several excellent projects from the many new and refurbished structures completed in the UK and Ireland within the past year. Of course, staging the Olympics provides a unique opportunity to design and build intentionally eye-catching structures - with the "Bird Nest" and "Water Cube" in Beijing being the most startling from the recent Olympiads. But when posed a challenge such as this - and think not just of the Olympics but of major sporting developments, the Millennium projects in the UK a decade ago, major infrastructure renewal such as T5 at Heathrow or the CTRL Terminus at St Pancras, commercial developments such as "The Gerkin" or "The Shard" or major bridges worldwide such as Stonecutters, Sutong or the Rion Antirion -structural engineers unfailingly provide the framework that permits the daring, imaginative and sometimes seemingly perverse requirements of clients, architects and operators to become reality.