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I was reminded about a year ago, when I took part in a seminar in the South of France
One of the people there said: the problem with engineers is that they're all Iagos.
What does that mean?
He directed me to read an essay by W H Auden about Othello,
in which Auden had put forward the idea that Iago is the prototype for scientific man
and that the parallel for us is that,
by using only pragmatism,
by using only rational thought,
by always demanding and wanting to know
whether what we want to do is right,
we destroy the very basis upon which
the good or noble things in our life exist.
I began to ask myself
What is the proper role for an engineer?
Not so much in society but in the nature of the industry,
or the nature of the way in which we work?
In this kind of environment, is there any noble role an engineer can take?
Because you see, I think I believe the argument -- that's my dilemma -- is that I believe this argument,
that we are in a way Iagos...
...and have got to escape.
It all started with this very bright, intelligent man
who was very mathematically orientated,
finding out in his mid 30s that he actually was a designer,
with a capital D.
He was always confident in his analytical ability,
but he had no confidence otherwise. He was a very modest man.
But then he gained that confidence.
His contact with Piano and with Rogers started his...
what you might call the creative side.
He became that very rare creature in engineering who has both
strong analytical capability and is also very imaginative conceptually.
He had an intuitive feeling. He's one of those people, like Brunelleschi, where there's no real difference between architecture, urbanism
and engineering. He could have an... he had an understanding of them all.
For me, Peter has been always a man of science with that kind of...
...capacity to understand the challenge of human beings...
knowledge, understanding.
He had a very unconventional approach to working with people, and I think that's why he was
greatly loved as a person to work with,
because he never... he wasn't conventional, he wasn't linear, he wasn't predictable.
We'd talk about art, we'd talk about life, we'd talk about feelings and of course we'd talk about architecture and engineering.
But it was always... before we got into the nitty-gritty,
it was always trying to understand what it was,
what was this idea we were trying to convey with the project.
We often say that the characteristic of engineers is too narrow
because of their formation, their education.
Peter somehow managed to bypass all that somehow.
I'm not quite sure how.
I remember that he was quite a bit different to me.
He was... he had a different build, more... I was more like my father's side;
He was more like my mother's side.
And so he was more outgoing and more extraverted
and more willing to take risks.
The idea that a Catholic from the Republic would go to university in Belfast,
especially at that time in Belfast,
and then having no hesitation to go do different things,
it showed that he was a person who wanted to get involved
And more than I. I was more reticent.
I worked for seven years on the Sydney Opera House
first as an analyst in London, then later as the resident engineer on site.
I've always had a certain capacity, something many of you must recognise,
to do mathematics without necessarily having to get...
to think about it.
And it was only really when I got to Sydney and started the building process
that I realised that maybe the process of being an engineer could actually be fun.
I think my favourite one was the Sydney Opera House, yes.
Because we were there for three years and it was just a lovely place to be.
I was always interested, because I'd go and meet him sometimes,
and you had to have a pass to get onto the site,
and you could follow the progress.
When they put the top piece of the rib, well, it was a monumental occasion.
Was it going to fit?
There was all... all the calculations had been done...
And it did and I think there was a big cheer went up.
He was present when Utzon, the original architect,
wandered around the site.
He saw Utzon in full flight, as I did.
It influenced him, and those influences, together with his own...
if you like...
intellectual capabilities, led him to the next step.
So this is the Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, the Pompidou Centre,
and this is France's greatest modern building, in my opinion.
And it's a very, very significant building for Paris.
I guess this is the first major project that he was involved in as a designer.
It was maybe his most important project.
The first Pompidou is an incredible adventure.
It's like there were these three young people that had won...
this project in the middle of France, who was highly conservative...
...and didn't necessarily want it.
And the project was supported by Monsieur Pompidou, the President at the time...
But it...
Making such a project happen is...
...and I think that's where a lot of his skills also developed, in terms of making things happen.
I think it was 70 or 71 in London.
It was for the competition, the Centre Pompidou.
The man that came first time to the office was Ted Happold, if I remember.
And then he came with Peter.
Peter was brought in because it was quite clear that we had to have more backup...
and Peter was, right from the beginning,
...a wonderful individual and engineer.
We started the work and immediately understood we are talking the same language,
because it was really about coming...
...pieces coming together.
And we sketched something, but it was immediately basically a machine,
a uber machine.
Peter became important in the whole team when there was two Italians talking to each other.
It was becoming a bit strange,
a bit noisy in the office.
We were all in one room.
So Richard one day called everybody and said, look, if we throw plates at other,
Renzo and I, don't start worrying.
You're all looking worried.
We're just Italian.
Yes, where Renzo and I come from, you throw your plates around type-of-thing when things go wrong.
I always say that Italians are a... there's a
slap and kiss process. In other words you slap and then you kiss!
That's not an Irish process!
Part of his cultural makeup was a slight garrulousness,
an ability to talk,
a wish to talk.
I think word had got to the client that this was going on.
Robert Bordass was the President of the Etablissement Publique,
and I think he'd recognised that Peter was the gel necessary to sort this out.
So for a period of time we were told that, look, Peter is the key man in this operation
at the moment, he's going to hold everybody together, Richard,
Renzo, the whole team.
So we all looked... well, myself, I looked round and thought, well, Peter must be somebody.
It was this moment in time when architects got very excited by engineering
and they wanted to show it and celebrate it.
To make a building for culture that looked like a machine was exactly the opposite of the monumental, intimidating marble building.
We wanted to create a sense of curiosity or enjoyment.
For me, it's an expression of the way that Peter thought
and the way that the building expresses itself.
There is a total separation between compression and tension,
there's use of articulated joints. It is...
You can read the building.
Here, we're on the end elevation and you can see the gerberettes, you can see the large band trusses,
you can see the services on the outside.
It tells everything about what the project was about and how it's expressing its architecture.
That was Peter's idea, the idea that when you have to span 50 metres,
you have to do something more than just supporting
and being like that,
because you have a moment that is too big,
so he came up with something more articulated.
I don't remember of course when this came up, but it was certainly Peter.
We'd seen some pretty big castings in Japan so we knew it was possible to do a cast-iron gerberette.
And of course, it... gives it a feel. One of the beauties about this material...
...is that it's... you can mould it to any shape.
He said to me one day: he'd seen this old lady who was in the Pompidou,
and clearly Pompidou could be quite alienating, and apparently she was stroking...
...one of the goborettes and touching it gently like it was a dog or something...
...and it was reassuring her.
And he felt he'd actually done his job properly,
by having provided a way for somebody who was not necessarily knowledgeable...
...in terms of high tech, of entering into the building.
And Peter said to me at one time when I was doing a very difficult project, he said: "you watch, nobody will realise what you've done until many years...
...afterwards". And I think that was true of this for Richard in terms of the fact that the true significance of this building...
...took a long time to sink into the profession.
And I suspect also it's the same for Peter, that it took a long time before people really realised...
...how significant this was.
And certainly when we started doing La Villette,
which was ten years afterwards, that was probably...
...about the time when his reputation was coming to maturity.
But I would say, I don't know, this is subject to correction, but between...
...the two, he had many interesting projects, but it took...
...a long time to sink in.
Peter's role in Arup was very unique.
He was a director of the firm,
and a member of the group board,
who also was the director and founder of another firm,
which he actively played a part in every week.
He wanted his cake and eat it.
He obviously didn't want to leave Arup but he also wanted to have other experiences.
He was quite complicated in that way, and that was okay.
And we came to an accommodation.
My father had learnt French. He'd I think fallen in love with Paris,
and with French culture,
and he wanted to continue.
And so when the opportunity came to do another project in France,
La Villette,
Arup didn't want to do it and so he set up a company to do this project,
and that was RFR.
In conversation with Peter I mentioned Martin Francis, who I'd worked with.
Peter said, yes, that's interesting.
He rang up Martin and said, I gather you're quite good at glass.
So we met at the brasserie at the Gare du Nord.
Halfway through the meal Peter said, okay, we'll do it.
And so that was the formation of the noyer, the hub.
And we did La Villette and we did all sorts of extraordinarily radical things.
I think everybody tends to forget that before La Villette,
there had never been a cable-stayed glass system.
And there was a eureka moment in terms of the facade,
when we were discussing together about glass structures.
And I said: the problem is that engineers don't understand that glass is a flexible material.
And Peter had this eureka moment.
He said: ah, if that's the case then we don't have the rigid supporting structure,
then we can use cables.
And this... the whole thing started from that magic moment,
where we could end up with a facade that was flexible,
and it was absolutely brilliant.
What was interesting about the setup of RFR,
was you had three genuinely different disciplines,
the engineer,
the architect,
the industrial designer.
But I think my father was very clear that he was not an architect in any way, shape or form;
He was an engineer. And that in itself is a profession that...
...has great scope for innovation.
You don't have to be an architect to bring new ideas to the table.
I think for a lot of the young engineers around working with Peter,
most of us found him quite intimidating initially,
because of the immediate expectation that he had...
that we were just...
knew what we were doing and we were going to just deliver it.
There was quite a lot of responsibility quite rapidly.
It didn't matter to him that you'd done a lot of things beforehand.
If you could think you could work.`
Peter's approach, like common with many architects, is to keep working...
...at an idea until it is as good as it can be.
And things like deadlines and things like needing to issue drawings to contractors...
...shouldn't be seen, in his view, as necessarily...
...barriers to making it a little bit better.
I felt nervous with Peter because it was just so intense,
...and the projects were so challenging,
and really incredible structures to be working on.
I was very green. I had really no real buildings experience,
and I think he quite liked that I didn't have experience...
...because he felt that I wouldn't be predisposed to use standard solutions.
While I had a skill set I didn't have a philosophy, I didn't have an approach to engineering.
So for me, I learnt all that, I think, with Peter.
So it was about exploration,
about on a project, what can we do that's new or different?
And it was about that everything we do in the end is for the benefit of humankind.
That's the one that sticks with me most.
It's about how are people going to respond to this structure...
...or building when it's completed?
The large projects, like Lloyds of London, obviously had a large and experienced team,
but many of Peter's smaller projects were done with a young engineer and Peter.
And I suppose Moon Theatre is one of those examples.
It was a project with almost no budget,
almost no fee,
but it was just an important thing to do.
That for me captures who he was,
because it wasn't really about engineering,
it was about imagining and poetry,
and seeing how that could...
...be expressed in a physical...
and conceptual way.
When once upon a time a director of the Paris Opera...
...went outside to read his newspaper,
he found to his surprise that he didn't need a candle,
he didn't need to carry a lamp with him,
the moonlight was sufficient to read by.
And as a theatre director that fascinated him.
So I pick up the phone,
I call Peter and I say:
I've got a crazy idea
I want to make this theatre,
and I've been doing things with the moonlight,
and the idea would be to use moonlight
in order to light the theatre.
So Peter says, I'm coming tomorrow.
And Peter did something very important,
because my tendency was to go and develop the idea
and go with the industry,
and Peter,
he said, no, no, no.
We should do it all in Gourgoubès,
we should do it all here.
The concept is actually very easily stated.
It's to create an outdoor theatre,
where the stage and the performers
are lit only by reflected moonlight.
We got a team of six masons from Morocco, from the Atlas,
from the Berber
and we built the theatre in three months.
Peter got a call from Humbert to say
the full moon's in five day's time
the auditorium's ready,
what are we doing?
My father was very enthusiastic about the Full Moon Theatre,
but for me it all seemed a bit odd.
But I think these days I have a better understanding of what was so interesting for him,
because it's clearly a marriage of high tech and low tech.
And his... I think he loved the idea that you could take
state-of-the-art engineering and ally it to
really a very... a craftsman's approach to building,
and come up with something which is on a human scale,
which is... which has a very human feel to it,
because it's unpredictable,
and it' s not just there when you want it to be.
When he married his daughter here,
and it was also his birthday,
most of his family came from all over the world.
It was fantastic.
We arrived a week before the wedding.
Peter had organised the ceremony.
It was based on an Irish pagan wedding.
So it happened here,
and we married Peter's daughter on the Full Moon Theatre stage.
So that was July/August 92.
That was the last time we saw each other,
and that was the end.
To my knowledge, Peter really didn't write much...
...during his career.
I think he was just too busy.
He was always on the go,
as you might imagine,
always talking, always exploring things with people.
Apart from a few Arup journals I think there's very little that he wrote.
So it was a bit...
...of an amazing...
...gift really that in his...
...last year he produced the book.
I have a few favourite quotes in it.
There's a quote about courage that I use very, very often,
the courage of getting started.
It says:
Perhaps the missing ingredient is courage,
the courage you need is to start.
The courage to start and an unshakable belief in one's ability...
...tosolve the new problems that will arise...
...in the developments are essential.
So it's really: you know that you're going to be able to solve it.
You don't know how yet.
And that is probably something that we all have in ourselves now, still.
The quote at the end, he talks about what architects come to get from him,
and they come to buy surprise.
And he says: I have no idea what I'm going to give them either.
I'm a bit like a hound following a fox.
I'm following something really close to the ground and I can't actually see where it's going.
I've got my nose to the ground to make sure I'm following it properly.
So he is himself surprised sometimes about where it goes to but he's following his own instinct and his own...
where the project is leading him,
where the ideas are leading him.
And so those two quotes are my classic Peter moments,
where really I feel that I'm...
...still trying to live by those words in a way...
...and trying to follow his leadership in a way.
The legacy, the real legacy that's left, is the engineer is...
...more than an engineer...
...and that's I think what we need today.
We talk about the 21st century being...
...the century of the engineer,
but we need engineers who are very, very broad in their makeup,
and very rich poetically in their thinking.
He was a humanist, Peter.
He was a humanist.
He loved art.
He loved working with art,
his love of music.
He loved horses as well, but...
He wasn't like any other engineer that I've ever known or met,
because he... we would have much wider conversations.
It wasn't just about engineering.
It was never about form.
It was much more existential.
It was much more philosophical.
Because he was thinking conceptually it meant he could have these wonderful conversations...
...with the many architects who loved working with him.
Because once you abstract an idea,
others can enter it as well.
It didn't remain in the realm of numbers,
it became a conceptual principal.
If you were to combine philosophy,
which obviously Ove Arup had,
Peter had a degree of that.
Combine that with art,
they're the two ingredients, if you like.
One is the rational and one is the...
might be called the irrational,
two aspects which make up being human.
And Peter had elements
of both of those...
...along with his Iago characteristic of being able to analyse and...
...crucify an idea if he wanted to.
But his real legacy is he never wanted to kill those poetic ideas,
unless the engineering or the mathematics simply destroyed them.
So he's always trying to find a way of making...
the poetic work...
and I think that's quite rare in an engineer.
Peter believed that if you couldn't get a poetic solution...
...a real rhythm...
...a beautiful solution...
That was a truth.
To him, truth was not just:
"you're a liar".
the lie... because the structure might have worked, which is different.
But inside what you're doing there's a nature...
...and then you unlock the nature of that thing.
So Iago, through his analysis of everything,
through his pragmatism,
controls everything.
And what Peter Rice enjoys is divesting himself entirely of that Iago personality
and becoming instead, as it were, playfully in love...
...with whatever the materials are...
and with what people wish to make...
...there-and-then in that place.
He was really excited because the lovely architects that had put his name forward.
They didn't tell him that... what they were doing.
I think everybody knew, because it was a very aggressive tumour.
And I think...
...that helped him an awful lot...
...getting the gold medal.
I think it's the happiest I'd seen him...
...in a very long time...
...and he felt that was the apex of his career, really.
It was a great tribute...
...to him that the...
the architectural community...
-- and by that I mean at the very high...
at a very high level ---
were in such awe...
...and such admiration...
...for him as an engineer, a thinker...
...a designer...
that it was just...
It felt inevitable that he should be awarded
the gold medal.
The reason I think the gold medal is important is that...
it was an acknowledgement by the architectural profession
that Peter, in particular...
...but I think all engineers...
deserved credit.
When you use a word like engineer,
structural engineer
there's immediate limits and definitions which are actually inherent in the use of the word.
Also, the word engineer is not nearly so limiting in French or is not nearly so...
....I suppose, prejudiced, is the word.
And the very liberty that the word engineer
can give you in French
and even more so in Italian
is actually the essence...
...of the way that I think I have changed
and things have changed...
with the way I work in the last five or six or seven years.
Yes, at a certain age, you are what you are.
You are what you have been taking from everybody.
And if I think about what Peter gave me,
one of those things is integrity
And the idea that a building needs integrity.
It's part of the legacy.
Peter was probably one of the great engineers.
To my mind, he is one the great geniuses,
but he never would say that himself.
He once said to me that the most important thing for him in his professional life
was to respect other people and to be respected in return,
and I think that was much more important to him than...
...having influence over other people.
It's very hard for me to talk about Peter
because it's difficult.
One thing is for sure; when he went away...
...it was a terrible loss.
It was something that
I never recovered from,
because it was really somewhere where it was impossible,
something where it was impossible to find the difference between the architect and the engineer.
It was continuously crossing borders.
Not only was he the greatest living engineer that I knew of...
...but he was also a really great friend...
and to both Renzo and I.
I think Peter lived almost exactly a year from the diagnosis of his tumour.
He looked at this last part of his life as a valuable last bit,
and he wanted to make sure there was a project.
And he also had some ideas, which I think he thought:
I'd better get these down now,
just in case I'm not around.
I'd always seen it as a book which said something quite simple.
Like: Peter Rice, an engineer imagines.
That is to say,
My name is Peter Rice. Here is my book.
I am an engineer and a thing I used to do is imagine,
to make things up.
But then I realised that,
No, it's a book written for the profession.
It's written for people who will come after him.
He's dying tragically young at the age of 57
and he writes the book and gives it a title which
isn't just personal in that way, it's: An Engineer Imagines.
It's an answer to the question:
What do engineers do?
And his answer is:
An Engineer Imagines.
Not an engineer calculates,
or an engineer argues,
or an engineer refuses.
An engineer imagines. That's what engineers do.
Peter combined both an understanding of materials and an understanding of problems...
...and an understanding of life.
And again, we come back to the fact that...
Arup gave him wings to fly.
Peter is very much in what you see around.
If you go around the office, if you go around,
if you go to the model shop there,
you will find traces of Peter, many...
That's really all the slides and things I wanted to show you.
But I want to remind you again, if you like, of where I started from.
That as engineers,
with pride in our pragmatism,
we must, I think,
from time to time, temper it
and seek to do things
which are maybe a little bit challenging,
if you like,
...outside the basic...
...what should I call them?
Values that we've been taught to believe in.
Thank you.
What will lead to inspiration in the future?
Who knows?
I think inspiration comes from people and the way they look at the world.
It's not ultimately...
...how should I call it...
a pre-programmable thing.
You have to read Shakespeare, maybe...