Peter Rice

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Peter Rice
Personal information
Name Peter Rice
Nationality Irish
Birth date 1935
Birth place Dundalk, Ireland
Date of death 1991
Education Queen's University of Belfast and
Imperial College, London, UK
Work
Engineering Discipline Structural engineer, Engineering design
Institution memberships Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers, Member of the Institution of Civil EngineersFellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Honourary Fellow of the Royal Institution of British Architects
Practice name Ove Arup & Partners
Significant projects Sydney Opera House
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Lloyd's of London, the Louvre Pyramid, Paris
Stansted Airport, UK

Peter Rice (1935–1992) was an Irish structural engineer.

Contents

[edit] Life

Born in Dundalk in County Louth, he spent his childhood between the town of Dundalk, and the villages of Gyles Quay and Inniskeen. He was educated at the Queen's University of Belfast where he received his primary degree, and spent a year at Imperial College, London. He originally studied Aeronautical Engineering but switched to Civil Engineering. Taken on by Ove Arup & Partners, his first job was the roof of the Sydney Opera House.

[edit] Work

Among the notable buildings on which design he worked are the Centre Pompidou, the Sydney Opera House, Lloyd's of London, the Louvre Pyramid, the Mound Stand at Lord's Cricket Ground, Kansai International Airport and Stansted Airport.

[edit] Career

After three years working on Utzon's shells in London, he moved to Sydney to be assistant engineer to Ian MacKenzie. After one month MacKenzie fell ill and was hospitalised, leaving Rice in total charge at the age of 28. Afterwards, he spent 18 months in the United States, in New York and as visiting scholar at Cornell University.

In 1971 he was part of the winning team competing in the French government's competition for the centre of Paris, partnering Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. After the Pompidou Centre, Rice set up his own company in 1977—"RFR"—along with Martin Francis and Ian Ritchie although he continued with Arup as a partner. In 1978 he was involved with Rogers again, this time on Lloyds of London, completed in 1984. During this time his other projects encompassed the Fleetguard Factory at Quimper in France, and Stansted Airport in London.

Though Rice was based in London, where he worked with Michael Hopkins on the tented Mound Stand at Lord's, much of his work was in Paris, including the great glass walls of the Cité des Sciences at La Villette and the tent-like canopy that softens the monumentality of the Grand Arche at La Défense. In 1985 I.M. Pei asked his help with projects at the Louvre in Paris, namely the shell structures for the glass roofs that Pei planned to cover inner courtyards.

By then he was in great demand continuing to work with architects such as Richard Rogers, I.M. Pei, Norman Foster, Ian Ritchie, Kenzo Tange, Paul Andreu, and Renzo Piano. The projects he worked on ranged from Toronto's Opera House by Moshe Safdie to Kansai's International Airport, one of many projects with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

In addition to his huge output, he was known for his sympathetic attitude to design, his strategic approach, a cool head and managing to realise ambitious artistic designs in concrete reality. One of his marks as an engineer was the length of time he allowed to complete a project.

During his relatively short career, Rice's contribution to the built environment can be seen in the work of the recent Pritzker Prize wiiners including: Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid, etc.

[edit] Awards

In 1992 he was the second engineer to be awarded the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture by the Royal Institute of British Architects (the first was Ove Arup), and the second Irishman after Michael Scott. The award is conferred by the Sovereign annually for work which has "promoted, either directly or indirectly, the advancement of architecture."

[edit] Death

He was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1991 and died the following year aged 57.

[edit] Prize

The Peter Rice Prize was established at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1994 in recognition of the ideals and principles represented by the late eminent engineer.

[edit] Further reading

  • An Engineer Imagines, Peter Rice (Ellipsis Press, 1998)
  • An Engineer Imagines, Peter Rice (Artemis, 1994)
  • Structural Glass, Hugh Dutton, Peter Rice (Routledge; 2001)
  • Transparente Architektur, Glasfassaden mit Structural Glazing, by H. Dutton, P. Rice (Birkhäuser Verlag; 1995)
  • Yutaka Saito in: Space design, 8/1992,335 by Y. Saito, O. Murai, K. Nanba, M. Ueda, P. Rice, T. Shinoda (p. 5 - 188)
  • Building a show: The Bastille Dances, by Station House Opera in: The Architects' Journal, 6/1989, by P. Rice (p. 72 - 73) - performance review
  • Design for better assembly, case study: Rogers' and Arup's in: The Architects' Journal, 36/1984, by J. Young, P. Rice, J. Thornton (p. 87 - 94)
  • Menil Collection Museum roof: evolving the form in: Arup journal, 2/1987, by P. Rice (p. 2 - 5)
  • Rogers revolution: Lloyd's remarkable new headquarters in: Building Design, 1986,807, by P. Rice (p. 32 - 33)
  • Il punto di vista di Peter Rice | An engineer's view in: L'Arca, 1987,5, by P. Rice (p. 70 - 75)
  • Unstable structures in: Columbia documents of architecture and theory, 1992, by P. Rice (p. 71 - 89)
  • Stratégie de l'araignée in: L'architecture d'aujourd'hui, 1987,252, by P. Rice (p. 78 - 79)
  • Menil Collection museum roof: evolving the form in: Offramp, 1991,4 by P. Rice (p. 117 - 119)
  • Gleichgewicht und Spannung | Equilibre et tension in: Archithese, 2/1990, by P. Rice (p. 84 - 96)
  • Konstruktive Intelligenz in: arch+: Rhetorik des Machens, 1990,102, by G. Behnisch, C. Vasconi, O. Aicher, J. Nouvel, H. C. Schulitz, P. Rice, R. Rogers, S. Polónyi, H. von Malotki (p. 42 - 52)

[edit] Projects

  • Crucible Theatre, Sheffield; 1967
  • Amberly Road Children's Home, London; 1969
  • National Sports Centre, Crystal Palace, London; 1970
  • Perspex spiral staircase, jeweller's shop, Jermyn Street, London; 1970
  • Super Grimentz Ski Village, Valais, Switzerland; 1970
  • Conference Centre, Mecca, Saudi Arabia; 1971
  • Special structures advice to Frei Otto and others on pneumatic and cable structures including "The City in the Arctic"; 1971
  • Jumbo jet hangar, Johannesburg, South Africa; 1976
  • TGV Station Lille; 1994
  • Mobiles Zelt in London London; 1992
  • TGV Station Roissy; 1991-94
  • Elektronikfabrik Thomson Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines; 1990
  • Umbau des Louvre Paris-1er; 1988-93
  • De Menil Collection Houston; 1981-86
  • IBM Pavillon 1980-84
  • 'Quartierslaboratorium' für Stadterneuerung Otranto; 1979
  • Residential Complex Corciano; 1978-82

[edit] External links