Founded in 1976, Buro Happold is a renowned progressive international engineering and planning consultancy, working alongside the world’s best architects and designers as an equal player. Taking as its basis the ideals and achievements of the company's founder, Sir Edmund (Ted) Happold (1930-1996), it reveals how its famously innovative engineering has now evolved into expertise spanning the whole built environment, with better, healthier and truly sustainable buildings and cities its achievable goal. It illustrates the full scope of these innovations through 50 key projects from across 50 years, including the Millennium Dome, the British Museum Great Court, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, the London 2012 Olympic Stadium, the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, Morpheus tower in Macau, football stadia for Arsenal, Spurs and Everton, the Battersea Power Station redevelopment in London and the High Line park in Manhattan. Each project focuses on explaining simply the key engineering or planning aspects, from a jewel-like Oxbridge building to a whole city district.

The book also examines how fast-developing technology, from early computers to AI, has transformed what engineers can do and unleashed real innovation, as well as the practical steps Buro Happold has taken in vigorously tackling the causes of climate change in construction and urban design. The book concludes by assessing what needs to be done to plan for the next 50 years, with an informed look into the towns and cities of the future.