Ove Arup

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Sir Ove Nyquist Arup CBE , RA MICE, MIStructE (born April 16, 1895 in Newcastle upon Tyne , † February 5, 1988 in London ) was a British - Danish engineer , structural engineer , theorist and founder of the global engineering firm Arup .

He is considered one of the most important engineers of the 20th century. Ove Arup combined philosophical and artistic aspects with the practical execution and fulfilled a bridging function between the aesthetic and structural aspects in the construction planning . He is one of the few engineers who the Architecture Prize Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects received and member of Architects think tank MARS Group were. He gained international fame mainly through its participation as an engineer at the opera house of Sydney .

Life

Training and early work

Ove Arup (1906)

Ove Arup was born in Newcastle, England in 1895 as the son of the Dane Jens Simon Johannes Arup and the Norwegian Mathilde Bolette Nyquist. His parents, who were actually living in Hamburg at the time , had their son in England because the heavily pregnant mother accompanied his father on a trip abroad. Jens Arup had traveled to England as a veterinarian on behalf of the Danish government. Until he was twelve, Ove Arup lived in Hamburg without interruption. Ove had a brother and three sisters.

Arup first attended the Sorø Academy boarding school in Denmark and began studying philosophy and mathematics at the University of Copenhagen in 1913 and graduated in philosophy in 1916. In 1918 he moved to Polyteknisk Læreanstalt to study civil engineering. He specialized in reinforced concrete and finished his studies in 1922. Arup was mainly influenced by the work of the two architects Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius .

After completing his studies, he started working for the Hamburg company Christiani & Nielsen in 1922 and moved to the London branch as chief engineer in December 1923. On August 13, 1925, he married Ruth Sorenson, who was also called Li. In 1932/33 he designed the Labworth Café, a coffee house on Canvey Island with two integrated shelters on the promenade. The building in which he appeared as an architect is the only structure completely designed by him and a reminiscence of Erich Mendelsohn .

In the 1930s he worked with several architects, including Ernő Goldfinger , Wells Coates , Maxwell Fry , Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall and Marcel Breuer . With the architecture firm Tecton Group , founded in 1932 , which at the time was a leader in New Building in Europe, Arup realized various structures such as the penguin pool in London Zoo and the Highpoint I and Highpoint II apartment blocks in London. The architect of each building was Berthold Lubetkin from Russia . The collaboration between Lubetkin and Arup was particularly beneficial for both. Arup then worked for the London company JL Kier & Co. in London, where he was a senior engineer from 1934 to 1938. In 1935 he became a board member of the MARS Group architectural association . The strict demarcation of civil engineers, general contractors and engineers that was customary at the time meant that buildings could hardly be looked after from the beginning to the end. This often meant that necessary engineering aspects had to be woven into the architecture afterwards. That was the reason why in 1938 he and his cousin Arne Arup founded the construction company Arup & Arup Limited and the engineering firm Arup Designs Ltd. founded. Only then was it possible to professionally accompany architects from the beginning of the planning to the completion of the building.

During the Second World War

Before the start of the Second World War , Arup was appointed to the organizing committee for air defense. During the war he published a number of technical articles on the construction of air raid shelters . He developed concrete bunkers that would have been particularly quickly accessible via double helix ramps , should have air conditioning and should be equipped with sleeping accommodations and sanitary facilities . To do this, he used his experience that he had gained in building maritime structures. His design for the bunker provided for six basement floors and a wide entrance area that would have given up to 7,600 people the opportunity to find refuge within three minutes. However, the publication of his plans sparked a public controversy. From 1940 on, Arup worked on other smaller defense projects, such as tunnels, specially reinforced water and oil tanks, hangars and water towers . In 1942 his office began work on the secret, underground headquarters of the RAF Coastal Command in Northwood, the Royal Air Force's naval aviation unit . Together with Ronald Jenkins (1907–1975) he designed and built concrete pier heads as ramming protection for the floating Mulberry ports . Arup also played an important role in the calculations for these ports used when landing in Normandy during D-Day .

Since 1946

On April 1, 1946, he dissolved Arup & Arup Ltd in favor of a new office. The new company, Ove N. Arup Consulting Engineers , which he founded in Ireland, consisted of a team of civil engineers. In the same year he founded Arup and Partners with partners Ronald Jenkins, Geoffrey Wood and Andrew Young . In 1963 he founded the architectural office Arup Associates with the architect Philip Dowson and in the following years further branches and worldwide branches. In 1973 his company reached 1,500 employees. Since 2000 the company has been trading under the general name Arup . The London-based group currently has 92 offices in 31 countries around the world and in 2006 employed over 10,000 people.

Sydney Opera House

Among the most famous engineering services Ove Arup's participation counts at the Opera House of Sydney . The architect of the opera house, the Dane Jørn Utzon , won the international architecture competition in 1957 with his rather rough sketch and was able to prevail over 217 proposals from 27 countries. The Utzon design convinced the competition jury, but they completely ignored many details of the technical implementation; not a single juror was an engineer. The complex geometry of the shell-shaped roof in particular required intensive collaboration between the architect and engineers. The first meeting between Ove Arup and Utzon was in the same year. Over the next six years, over twelve different shapes for the roof were tried that had to be both economical and practical. Arup used computers for the structural analysis of the shapes and their forces. Between Arup and Utzon there were always different opinions about the execution. So Arup tried to convince the architect that the smooth roof surface should be given up in favor of a corrugated structure, as this would be easier to implement. The long planning time and the massive cost overrun put a strain on the relationship between Utzon, Arup and the government of New South Wales . After the government blocked the funds, Utzon even gave up the project entirely. He never visited the building he designed. In the end, the perseverance of Ove Arup and his partners in the engineering office was able to bring the construction project to a successful conclusion. In an interview with the BBC , he described the project as "far more difficult than expected and almost too exciting". Despite the falling out with Jørn Utzon, he was fundamentally convinced of his design, which is reflected in the following statement:

Ove Arup, Kingsgate Bridge Durham (1963)

"He is a genius, with all the faults which this implies. Only he can finish the Opera House as it should be finished. It doesn't matter whether Utzon is right or wrong; it doesn't matter about him, even, or you or any of us - but this masterpiece must be saved for humanity. "

- Jones: Ove Arup: Masterbuilder of the Twentieth Century. , P. 240

“He's a genius with all the flaws that come with it. Only he can complete the opera house as it should be. It doesn't matter whether Utzon is right; it doesn't matter to him, not even to you or any of us - but this masterpiece must be preserved for humanity. "

The last structure Arup personally designed was the Kingsgate Pedestrian Bridge in Durham . He designed the modern reinforced concrete bridge over the Wear in 1963. It is now under monument protection ( Grade I ) of the English Heritage . When designing the bridge, he compared his work with considerations during a game of chess . One must always ask oneself for what purpose one does certain things. After completing the bridge, Arup withdrew from the day-to-day work in the office.

Arup died in 1988 at the age of 93. He and his wife had two daughters.

Honors

literature

  • Peter Jones: Ove Arup: Masterbuilder of the Twentieth Century. Yale University Press 2006, ISBN 978-0-300-11296-2 .
  • Christian Brensing: Engineer portrait: Ove Nyquist Arup . in: Deutsche Bauzeitung , December 2006, pp. 58–62. ( as PDF online )
  • Christian Brensing and Karl-Eugen Kurrer : 60 years of Ove Arup & Partner . In: Stahlbau 75 (2006), no. 12, pp. 1025-1027.

Web links

Commons : Ove Arup  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephen Sennott (Ed.): Encyclopedia of 20th Century Architecture , Fitzroy Dearborn Pub 2004, ISBN 978-1-57958-433-7 , p. 78.
  2. ↑ Biography Ove Arup
  3. ↑ Brensing: Engineer portrait: Ove Nyquist Arup , p 58
  4. ↑ Brensing: Engineer portrait: Ove Nyquist Arup , p 59
  5. ↑ a b c d Jones: Ove Arup: Masterbuilder of the Twentieth Century. P. 31
  6. ^ Jones: Ove Arup: Masterbuilder of the Twentieth Century. P. 44
  7. ↑ Brensing: Engineer portrait: Ove Nyquist Arup , p 62
  8. ↑ Brensing: engineer portrait: Ove Nyquist Arup , p 61
  9. ^ Ove Arup: The war years in London
  10. ^ Ove Arup: Mulberry Harbor pierhead fendering
  11. ↑ arup.com: History
  12. ^ Peter Murray: The Saga of Sydney Opera House , Routledge Chapman & Hall 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-32522-6 , p. 5
  13. ^ Ove Arup: Sydney Opera House, 1957–1973
  14. ^ Ove Arup: Kingsgate footbridge - engineering as architecture
  15. ↑ Royal Institute of British Architects : Ove Arup (1895–1988)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.architecture.com  
personal data
SURNAME Arup, Ove
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Arup, Ove Nyquist (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Norwegian-Danish engineer
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Newcastle upon Tyne
DATE OF DEATH 5th February 1988
Place of death London