Grubby reality eclipses Ove Arup’s soaring achievement
Company founded by the 20th century’s most admired engineer had a hand in iconic buildings the world over, including Hong Kong. It’s present-day dealings in the city, and elsewhere, would have Arup spinning in his grave
The most influential and admired engineer of the 20th century – who embedded his core values in the pioneering consultancy firm he founded in London in 1946 – must be turning in his grave.
Sir Ove Arup was that rare combination of philosopher and visionary structural engineer. His name and his principle of “total design” are embedded in some of the world’s most iconic buildings, including the Sydney Opera House, the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, and HSBC’s Hong Kong headquarters, at 1 Queen’s Road Central.
“Much like the legendary Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Ove Arup was a game-changer who transformed engineering practice in his day,” says Zofia Trafas White, co-curator of an ongoing exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) celebrating Arup’s life (he died in 1988, at the age of 92) and legacy in what he called the “built world”.
As if to underline the Hong Kong connection, the exhibition, titled “Engineering the World: Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design”, features a large-scale model of the HSBC building as a prominent exhibit.
“Unconventional and playful in his approach, his collaborative working style revolutionised building design during his lifetime and influenced how buildings are made today,” White says.
Inexplicably, “the greatest engineer of the 20th century”, as White calls him, never enjoyed the same public profile as his contemporaries in architecture, the arts and science. All of which makes it particularly unfortunate that his name should be sullied by recent media reports just as he was receiving some well-deserved recognition.
