Chairman, Buro Happold

Gavin joined Buro Happold in 1987 and became a partner of the practice in 2000, before becoming Chief Executive Officer in 2005. He became chairman of the company in May 2011. In addition to active design roles on projects he currently leads practice wide business development and work winning. A strong desire to explore has seen Gavin live and work in the UK, mainland Europe, the Middle East, North America, and South East Asia and retains a key interest in developing Buro Happolds global presence and influence. During Gavin's time as CEO he lead the opening of several new Buro Happold offices worldwide, including; Belfast, Copenhagen, LA, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Moscow, Pune, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Beijing. Buro Happold continues to extend its global reach, with recent project wins in Asia, Eastern Europe and South America. Gavin is a chartered building environmental engineer, however as one would expect from someone who has grown his career within Buro Happold his interests extend right across the built environment. His design work has been focussed on maximising passive building performance linked to complimentary active environmental systems. A true passion for design in its broadest sense flows through Gavin's work, coupled with a deep technical interest in low carbon design. He is currently pioneering the development of rapid optioneering techniques for zero emission building and community design in China. For the past 15 years Gavin has lectured at Universities within and outside the UK, in particular teaching multi-disciplinary design, running architectural low carbon master classes in the US and acting as an external examiner at Northumbria University. Gavin is currently a board member of the Association for Consultancy and Engineering.