2006-06-15 Too few books like this ...

The "Engineer's Contribution to Architecture" book series was published jointly by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Thomas Telford (part of the Institution of Civil Engineers). The aim is implicit in the title - to highlight examples of modern architecture where the engineer's role is vital, and to increase recognition for the most creative engineers.

Peter Rice is an excellent example, having worked on the Sydney Opera House, Centre Pompidou, Lloyds of London building and several other key examples of the high-tech style.

This book does a good job of documenting his work, particularly his concerns for craftsmanship and his desire to act as an enabler for creative architects. Like most building engineers, and many of his colleagues at Arups, he saw his role as essentially a supporting one, however innovative his work may have got. In this respect, I find him somewhat hard to admire, especially compared to engineers in the bridge field who are far more confident about their own ability to determine structural form.

Nonetheless, the book is well-illustrated, with plenty of photos. Disappointingly, there are few technical diagrams, and the author often tries to describe in words something that could be explained far more simply with a drawing. There's little doubt that the aim is to put Rice on a pedestal in the same way as much architectural criticism deals with "hero-architects", although there is some acknowledgement of the teams that Rice was part of.

The main disappointment is that the book was written after Rice's death in 1992 - this means there are few opportunities to read what the engineer himself really thought. This is a problem with engineering literature generally, and I'd love to see more books like this written about the giants of the profession while they are still active. To a great extent this is a problem with the engineering culture - more books would be written if there was more evidence that engineers wanted to find out about and be inspired by their peers.