- Peter Rice
Infobox Engineer
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name = Peter Rice
nationality = Irish
birth_date = 1935
birth_place =Dundalk ,Ireland
death_date = 1992
death_place =
education =Queen's University of Belfast andImperial College ,London ,UK
spouse =
parents =
children =
discipline =Structural engineer , Engineering design
institutions = Fellow of theInstitution of Structural Engineers , Member of theInstitution of Civil Engineers Fellow of theRoyal 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
significant_design =
awards =RIBA Gold Medal,IStructE Gold MedalPeter Rice (1935–1992) was an Irish
structural engineer .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 theQueen's University of Belfast where he received his primary degree, and spent a year atImperial College, London . He originally studiedAeronautical Engineering but switched toCivil Engineering . Taken on byOve Arup & Partners, his first job was the roof of the Sydney Opera House.Work
Among the notable buildings on which design he worked are the
Centre Pompidou , theSydney Opera House ,Lloyd's of London , the Louvre Pyramid, the Mound Stand atLord's Cricket Ground ,Kansai International Airport andStansted Airport .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 onLloyds of London , completed in 1984. During this time his other projects encompassed the Fleetguard Factory at Quimper in France, andStansted 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 atLa 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.
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 wasOve 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."Death
He was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1991 and died the following year aged 57.
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.
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)
Projects
*"
Sydney Opera House , Sydney, Australia; 1957"*"Crucible Theatre, Sheffield; 1967"
*"Amberly Road Children's Home, London; 1969"
*"National Sports Centre, Crystal Palace, London; 1970"
*"Arts Centre,
University of Warwick , Coventry; 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"
*"
Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg), Paris, France; 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"
*"Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie Paris-19e; 1986"*"De Menil Collection Houston; 1981-86"
*"IBM Pavillon 1980-84"
*"'Quartierslaboratorium' für Stadterneuerung Otranto; 1979"*"Residential Complex Corciano; 1978-82"
External links
* [http://www.irish-architecture.com/architects_ireland/peter_rice/ Architects of Ireland - Peter Rice, Engineer (1935-1992)] — from irish-architecture.com
* [http://www.rfr.fr/ RFR]
* [http://www.arup.com/feature.cfm?pageid=8828 Arup Innovators' hall of fame]
* [http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/inside/registrar/register/educational_resources/fellowships_prizes.html The Peter Rice Prize]
* [http://www.structuremag.org/archives/2007/January%202007/p52-56D-GA-RiceJan07.pdf The Imaginative Engineer]
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