Ian Liddell

Glasgow Tower

William Ian Liddell (* 1938 ) is a British civil engineer, best known for the structural design of the Millennium Dome (The O2) in London .

Liddell studied mechanics at St John's College of the University of Cambridge ; later he took courses on reinforced and prestressed concrete at Imperial College London (after having worked for Arup in the engineering office for several years). He worked at Arup (including the Sydney Opera House as a project engineer) and at the South Bank Art Center. After completing his postgraduate studies, he worked for the construction company Holst and Company for some time and constructed industrial buildings from reinforced concrete before he returned to Arup. There he was involved in the construction of the Intercontinental Hotel and Conference Center in Riyadh in 1966. In 1976 he left Arup when Edmund Happold (who also left Arup) founded Buro Happold, an engineering office in Bath , of which he was one of the founding partners. After his partnership he was a consultant there. He also taught at Cambridge as a Royal Academy visiting professor.

In 1999 he received the Gold Medal from the Institution of Structural Engineers , of which he is a fellow. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and became CBE for the Millennium Dome in 1999 . In 2002 he received the IABSE Merit Award.

Another project at Arup with Happold was the Multi Hall of Frei Otto in Mannheim (1974, as a project engineer) and he was involved in the establishment of a laboratory at Arup for the study of such lightweight frame structures with Happold. Since then he has dealt with lightweight structural structures, especially for atriums and stadiums. He drove the development of software for their analysis and design and introduced a special plastic film (EFTE, ethyl-tetra-fluoro-ethylene) into building practice.

His projects at Buro Happold also include the Glasgow Tower from 2001 (height 127 m), which can rotate completely around its axis (architect Richard Horden ). It is part of the Glasgow Science Center.

Web links

• Entry at the IABSE