(Community Matters) “We shape a better world.” What an extraordinary mantra for a design firm, one of the largest in the world. This from the Arup Group, who Business Week cites as the world’s 17th largest design firm with “work everywhere” including structural design for the Beijing Olympics stadium and the Sydney Opera House.
Our new friend, Taylor Keep, is in London completing one of their “Foresight & Innovation” projects – research on food, sustainability of the food supply and provocative thoughts launching important questions about food – especially, in Taylor’s mind, the intersection of food and energy policy.
Other foresight & innovation projects Arup has dedicated staff to, researched and published include urbanisation, demographics, water, climate change, waste and energy. It’s extraordinary that an engineering design firm has so long been so corporate social responsibility-minded. Taylor told us how these thought leadership pieces being created on critical global issues are used by staff and further engage clients.
After lunch, we followed Taylor to his offices to meet his boss, Chris Luebkeman. Chris is a scholar who taught engineering to architects at the preeminent schools, including MIT and moved to Arup to lead its research group. Not too many years after arriving, he launched its foresight and innovation group. Much more about all this, especially engaging to me as I’m writing an article about the CSR conference we held in Austin just two weeks ago. Alas, gotta get going. More perhaps later.
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