Rice, Peter

Peter Rice

“Born in Dundalk Co. Louth, Peter Rice spent most of his childhood between the town of Dundalk, and the villages of Gyles Quay and Inniskeen. He was educated at the local CBS before going to Newbridge College and then on to Queen’s University Belfast. He originally started to study Aeronautical Engineering but he found it uninteresting and switched to Civil Engineering. After he received his primary degree, he spent a year at Imperial College in London before joining Ove Arup and Partners in 1956 to work on the Sydney Opera House.”[1]

“Afterwards Rice worked with Frei Otto, a principal client of Arup’s, on projects involving tension structures. In 1971, Rice went on to collaborate with Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano to win the competition held by the French government to design the Centre Pompidou in Paris. For the following years, Rice would continue to team up with internationally recognized architects such I.M. Pei, Norman Foster, Ian Ritchie, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Paul Andreu and Kenzo Tange to create numerous and diverse structures. Rice decided to establish RFR (Rice Francis Ritchie) in Paris with Martin Francis and Ian Ritchie while still continuing to work for Arup for a while. In 1992 he became the second engineer to receive the RIBA Gold Medal for Architecture. Shortly after, Rice died from a brain tumor at the age of fifty seven.”[2]

Autobiography:

Projects

Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia

Lloyd’s Building, London, United Kingdom

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France

The Louvre Pyramid, Paris, France

Sources:
1 – Archiseek
2 – Ramirez-Santarriaga, Paola. Architecture Engineers of the 20th and 21st Century, University of Texas at Austin

Additional Info:
http://www.engineering-timelines.com/who/Rice_P/ricePeter.asp

Rice Francis Ritchie (bought out by Artelia)

Name: Rice Francis Ritchie
Main Office: Paris, France – 4 rue d’Enghien, 75010
Additional Offices:
>Stuttgart, Germany – Rotenbergstraße 20, D 70190
>Shanghai, China – 406, 4F QingKe Mansion, No.138 Fen Yang Road, Xu Hui District, 200031
>Abu Dhabi, Emirates
Number of Employees[1]: 97 (?)

Engineering Specialties:
Light Structures
Large-span Structures
Structures of Objects
Building Structures
Facades
Bridges
Glass Engineering
Complex Geometries
Comfort – Energy

Selected Projects:

Bioclimatique Greenhouse, Paris, France

The Louvre Pyramid, Paris, France

Japan Bridge, La Défense, Paris, France

Cube Cloud, La Défense, Paris, France

History[2]:
RFR(Rice Francis Ritchie) was founded in 1982 by Peter Rice, Martin Francis, and Ian Ritchie in Paris. RFR began with a project on the bioclimatic greenhouses at La Villette in Paris, working with a method to construct frameless suspended façade by using the intrinsic mechanical qualities of glass panels. Current interests of RFR include the creation of surfaces in double-curvature glass, the design of high-efficiency thermal facades, the effects of translucency in architecture, and transparent membranes used in creating self-supporting pneumatic cushions of large dimension.

Additional Projects:

Meydan City, Dubaï, United Arab Emirates

Intesa/San Paolo Tower, Turin, Italy

The Docks, Paris, France

Dosza Gyorgy UT Atrium, Budapest, Hungary

Banca Popolare di Lodi, Lodi, Italy

Sources:
1 – RFR Staff
2 – RFR History