Duncan Michael

Freedom Tower Tehran

Duncan Michael (born May 26, 1937 in Beauly , Inverness-shire ) is a Scottish civil engineer.

Duncan Michael studied civil engineering at the University of Edinburgh from 1955 and was also a trainee in the construction company Duncan Logan from 1956. In 1959 he received his doctorate from the University of Leeds with a dissertation on coal bunkers made of steel. In 1961 he became a lecturer in Leeds, but then in 1962 he went to Arup in London. Right from the start he was involved in Arup's work at the Sydney Opera House . In 1973 he opened their branch in Hong Kong and in 1977 he became director of Arup in Scotland and also director of Arup (member of the main board). In 1984 he opened the branch in California and in 1987 in New York. From 1995 to 2000 he was a board member of Arup (and trustee of its foundation from 1995 to 2004) and restructured the company into five areas that operated largely independently. He became Director of the Board of Useful Simple Trust (Arup's Owners' Foundation) in 2009.

Among other things, he researched high, interconnected wall panels in the 1960s.

His projects include:

side shells in the Sydney Opera House (1962)
Freedom Tower (Azadi) in Tehran (1969), and other buildings in Tehran. For the Azadi Monument, he used computers to arrange the intricate geometry of the curved marble stones.
Hopewell Center, Hong Kong (1979)
Shajiao C power station, China 1982
Lloyd of London built in 1984
New Children's Hospital, Stanford 1987
British Library London 1990
Yapi Kredi Bankasi, Istanbul 1994

In Hong Kong, he established his reputation with a series of repairs in the area of the great landslide of Po Shan (June 1972).

In 1984 he became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and in 2000 of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland (IESIS). In 2000 he received the gold medal from the Institution of Structural Engineers . In 2001 he was ennobled. In 2005 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 2016 he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.

In 2002 he founded the Lydia Michael Foundation in Scotland. In 2008 he became a founding member of the UK Board of Social Housing.

Web links

Remarks

↑ Part of a series of landslides in the aftermath of Typhoon Rose with heavy rainfall. There were at least 156 deaths in total (67 of them in the landslide that started on Po Shan Street). There have been large landslides there in the past, for example in 1925, and the development was restricted and several protective walls had been erected, but they could not stop the landslide. Despite the advance warning from cracks, no evacuation took place because of the heavy rain.

personal data
SURNAME	Michael, Duncan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Scottish civil engineer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 26, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH	Beauly

[1] Part of a series of landslides in the aftermath of Typhoon Rose with heavy rainfall. There were at least 156 deaths in total (67 of them in the landslide that started on Po Shan Street). There have been large landslides there in the past, for example in 1925, and the development was restricted and several protective walls had been erected, but they could not stop the landslide. Despite the advance warning from cracks, no evacuation took place because of the heavy rain.