ABSTRACT
The engineering practice of Søren Jensen Consulti ng Engineers was founded in 1945. This was during a period where resources wer e scarce and thus a guiding principle for the early designs was that ingenuit y had to be used in order to make the designs realisable. Innovation, useful - ness, low material use and long-lasting were keywords often used then and have since been at the core of the practice’s design principles. It was also a period of great progress in structural engineering wit h continuous development in the understanding of materials and structural principles. The p ractice, as others back then, carried out many small scale experim ents in or der to investigate and vali date design concepts. Examples are; gypsum boards were loaded with sand to reveal y ield lines for concrete design, and wood models of shell structures to investigate their deformation and failure properties. These investigations were often undertaken by Søren Jensen himself, and from the 1960’ s together with his son Erik Jensen who is still leading the practice. T here is thus a direct heritage from the necessity of the early design principles to the innovative and sustainable designs being realised today by the practice.
