The 19th century must have been an amazing time for engineers with new materials and technology pushing boundaries in buildings such as the 1851 Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, the Eiffel Tower and the new skyscrapers in Chicago alongside inventions such as plate glass and the Otis elevator, in addition to developments in railway and vehicle engineering.
In 1895, Ove Arup was born – his legacy which continues over 120 years later is celebrated at the Victoria & Albert Museum in “Engineering the World: Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design”.
Ove Arup (1895-1988) redefined the way that architects, designers and engineers work together through his pioneering philosophy of Total Design, which for him meant to ‘join all the professions right from the start’, a philosophy which the construction industry and its clients has still to fully embrace today. Trained initially in philosophy, Ove Arup transformed civil, structural and mechanical engineering, with the Firm moving into other areas such as acoustics, infrastructure and façade engineering.
In this time of uncertainty over Brexit, it is worth reflecting that Arup was born in Newcastle in England to a Danish vetinary surgeon and his Norwegian wide, he attended the Sorø Academy in Denmark, then in 1913 began studying philosophy at Copenhagen University befire enrolling for an engineering degree at the Technical University of Denmark, completing his studies in 1922, long before the creation of the EU. His firm, with headquarters in London now has offices all across the world.
Part of the Victoria & Albert Engineering Season, the exhibition is set within a new engineering structure and displays models, letters, drawings, films and photographs to present a selection of Arup’s early ground-breaking projects from proposals for air-raid shelters in Finchley to the sculptural Penguin Pool at London Zoo, the Sydney Opera House, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Kingsgate Footbridge in Durham, Kansai Airport Terminal and the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, in collaboration with architects such as Berthold Lubetkin, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. On display is the Pegasus Mark 1 Computer (1957), the newest computer available at the time at the University of Southampton which enabled the design of the structure for the Sydney Opera House (1965-72), at a time when calculations were otherwise done predominantly by hand, slide rule and calculator.
Ove Arup’s inspiration continues today and the exhibition shows some of the innovative work such as SoundLab® for acoustic studies, SolarLeaf, an experimental bio-reactive façade system that uses microalgae to generate renewable energy, and Wikihouse, a self-build and self-assembly house. The firm continues to tackle challenging engineering and technical problems and continues to research new sustainable ways of living in the 21st century.