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ULI UK: Young Leaders Innovators and Disrupters - Damien Eley
Innovators and Disrupters is a new series run by ULI UK Young Leaders: meet with people who are radically shaking up the world of brick and mortar with their iconoclast thinking.
“Delivering Gaudi’s towering vision for the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia”
Damian Eley’s talk will describe how Arup is helping to complete Gaudi’s masterpiece by developing the design of six great new spires using post-tensioned stone masonry.
Damian is a structural engineer and Associate Director with 23 years’ experience in the Building Engineering Group at Arup in London. He has a reputation for conceiving and delivering unusual and high quality design solutions in close collaboration with architects and the rest of the design team. Damian’s approach to design combines a rigorous, first principles approach to engineering with an eye for detail. He is interested in the expressive and cultural qualities of structural engineering as distinct from architecture, and always seeks the clear and honest expression of structural behaviour.
Damian has led the superstructure design of the recently completed Leadenhall Building since its inception in 2001. This project is the tallest building in the world with an exposed external steel frame and was designed to maximise the use of prefabrication in construction. Earlier projects in which he has played a notable design role include a set of irregular break-out floor structures known as the ‘Flying Carpets’ which are suspended within the atrium of Unilever House in London, the illuminated steel and glass ‘Beacon’ tension structure located outside Plantation House in London, and Arup’s naturally ventilated Campus office building near Birmingham.
Since 2014 Damian has been working with the team at La Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, helping to design the six spires which will be built over the central part of the Basilica.
Damian received the Murray Buxton award from the IStructE in 2011.