In this interview, Chris Williams shares his journey, insights about his professional work, explains key concepts important for shell structures along with advice to students and professionals. Chris Williams is an Artistic Professor at the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Chalmers University. Chris joined Ted Happold’s group at Arup in 1972 where he worked on Frei Otto’s Multihalle gridshells in Mannheim and was responsible for the structural analysis and physical model testing. His research interests hinge on the relationship between geometry and structural action as applied to towers, bridges and fabric and shell structures, as well as the response of these flexible structures to wind. It was pleasure to interview Dr. Williams.   Thank you Anand Shah for collaborating on this interview.  Journey 0:51 What inspired you to become a structural engineer?  1:41 What's your structural design philosophy? 2:28  How your philosophy evolved over the years? 5:39  How does a day in your life look like? 6:35 If you can name a book which had a biggest impact in your life, What would that be and why? 8:51 Can you share us the challenges faced in your career and how did you resolve it? 15:13  What will be your perspective on like how should one balance the knowledge and technology? 23:22 Stereotomy  Professional Work  26:52 When designing mainly gridshell structures how did you bring practice and research together? 30:54 What where the challenges faced in the Multihalle and how challenges were overcome in Civil Garden project? 39:27 How you see the future of lightweight structures?   Advice to Students and Young Professionals 44:43 What's the best piece of advice you have ever received? 47:48 What is Cohn-Vossen’s rigidity theorem? 50:58 How to scale results from small scale physical model to large scale? 54:31 Why is bending stiffness more important? 56:49 What is your piece of advice to people who want to do similar work but have limited resources? 58:25 How can one develop the artistic understanding of these kind of structures? 1:00:15 Follow your work