Chris Williams studied engineering at Cambridge and joined Ted Happold’s group at Ove Arup in 1972. At Arup he worked on the Frei Otto gridshells in Mannheim with Ian Liddell and was responsible for the analysis of the shells.

In 1976 he joined Ted Happold at what is now the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Bath. His research interests include the form generation of tension and shell structures, the buckling of grid shell structures and the aero-elastic behaviour of lightweight roof and bridge structures.

His work in the generation of structural form through biological and other analogies has lead to collaboration on a number of projects including the British Museum Great Court Roof (Buro Happold and Foster and Partners), the Millennium Dome Central Show Nets (Atelier One and Mark Fisher) the Japanese Pavilion Expo 2000 (Buro Happold and Shigeru Ban Architects), the Weald and Downland Museum (Buro Happold and Edward Cullinan Architects) and the Savill Garden Gridshell (Buro Happold and Glenn Howells Architects).