Arup is a British multinational firm of engineers, designers, architects and planners, with about 17,000 staff in more than 90 offices in 35 countries. It was founded in London in 1946 by Ove Arup, an expert in reinforced concrete who had engineered Lubetkin's Penguin Pool at London Zoo, as a group of many disciplines working together, an idea he called "Total Design", meant to serve peace and social progress after the war. His work as lead engineer on the Sydney Opera House made the firm famous for complex projects. Arup stepped back in 1970, and the firm is owned in trust for its employees.
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Arup engineered many landmarks designed by others, from the Centre Pompidou to the Beijing National Stadium. With Foster + Partners, NACO and the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design it designed Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3 (2008), at its opening the largest airport terminal in the world by floor area. With Cox Architecture it designed two bridges: the Kurilpa Bridge in Brisbane (2009), the world's largest hybrid tensegrity bridge, and the Helix Bridge in Singapore (2010), a footbridge shaped like a strand of DNA.
