Fifty years ago this week Queen Elizabeth II opened the Sydney Opera House and it immediately became one of the best known buildings in the world.
The famous shell structure is now synonymous with Australia and is universally admired as a masterpiece of 20th century architecture.
The opera house took 15 years to build and, shades of the National Children’s Hospital here, ran way over budget. The final cost was 14 times that originally envisaged when work began in 1959, but nobody denies now it was money well spent.
Irishman and structural engineer Peter Rice played a central role in creating the revolutionary modern structure using his mathematical expertise and artistic intuition to convert concrete, steel and glass into the world-renowned white sails roof structure.
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He worked on the site for seven years as the chief engineer. He said many years later: “I’ve always had a certain capacity, something many of you must recognise, to do mathematics without necessarily having to get to think about it.”
Mr Rice was brought up in Dundalk, in Co Louth, and studied engineering at Queen’s University Belfast, followed by a year at Imperial College London. He then joined Ove Arup, the international engineering consultancy, which in the late 1950s secured the contract to design and oversee the construction of the Sydney Opera House.
Working in Australia as a young site engineer under the auspices of the building’s Danish architect, Jørn Utzon, Rice was able to solve the incredibly complex engineering challenges and make Utzon’s vision a reality.
Mr Rice went on to become one of the most sought-after engineers of the 1970s and 1980s, working on the Pompidou Centre in Paris and Lloyds building in London, among many iconic projects he worked on. He died in 1992 at the age of 57.
To mark the 50th anniversary, An Post has issued a stamp celebrating Rice’s involvement in the building. The illustration is by renowned Irish artist David Rooney capturing the organic nature and acoustics of the building, while also referencing art created by First Nations Australians.
The “W” rate international stamp (€2.20) covers postage anywhere in the world and is available online at anpost.com/shop (with free delivery) and from the GPO and selected post offices nationwide.
An Post chief executive David McRedmond commented: “Ireland has been slow to recognise its contribution to Modernism. The 50th anniversary of Sydney Opera House is the perfect time to celebrate the role of Irish people, and of engineer Peter Rice in particular, to the great canon of world-class architecture and engineering.”
The stamp was launched on site in Sydney by Mr Rice’s son Kieran Rice, the Irish Ambassador to Australia Tim Mawe and Ronan Delaney of Arup Builders.
