Aecom: Friend or Foe? Is Architecture under threat?

It’s a well-known phrase from wartime movies, a challenge sent out into the darkness to an unknown visitor. On the day of my interview with David Glover Global Chief Executive, Building Engineering, it wasn’t dark and the identity of the US behemoth Aecom is well known to us all in the industry, but the grey London skies were suitably ominous and the intentions of the giant corporation are perceived as threatening to many architecture firms.

Ironically set in the same week that the British architectural press were celebrating the collapse of talks between Aecom and NBS, Aecom themselves were celebrating a Coup d'état, having just won the prestigious Serpentine pavilion contract from under the noses of Arup who had been engineers behind all the previous 12 pavilions. It also seemed fitting that the Aecom building in which the interview was to take place was formally the HQ of Davis Langdon…

Michael Hammond meets David Glover in next week’s exclusive insight. Find out how future history could be in the making now with the boundary between architecture and engineering blurring and buildings being increasingly performance driven…