Millennium Dome design wins Buro Happold UK's premier prize for engineering
Ian Liddell and team members available for interviews in Bath, Monday 25th October only. Interview bids: Four engineers from Buro Happold, who worked together to design the world famous Millennium Dome, have won the prestigious 1999 Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award. The Award is the UK's most coveted engineering prize, given for innovation. Project leader Ian Liddell, together with Paul Westbury, Dawood Pandor and Gary Dagger of Buro Happold will jointly receive £50,000 in prize money, and individual medals commemorating their significant achievement. Buro Happold will also receive a solid gold medal. HRH Prince Philip, Senior Fellow of the Academy of Engineering will present the Award to the team on Wednesday 24th November at Buckingham Palace.
The prize, given for innovation, has been awarded to the team not just because of the achievement in designing the Millennium Dome at Greenwich, but because of the future potential for such buildings. The judges look for groundbreaking products that could change the world. The Dome's revolutionary design represents an exciting way forward in building large-span, value-for-money buildings.
Ian Liddell, Partner of Buro Happold, a world expert in lightweight structures, and the man whose original innovative idea has allowed the Dome to become reality, says " Although the Dome looks curved, it's made entirely from flat fabric supported by straight cables. The
Dome works because it is so enormous - 70 km of cables are held at tensions of over 40 tonnes. There's no limit to how much bigger you could make a structure like this. Until now this has not been possible with conventionally designed fabric buildings."
Future applications of "Dome" technology raise the intriguing possibility of covering huge areas
of inhospitable land in extreme climate zones. Ian Liddell envisages the future covering of a city in a transparent super dome - allowing people to live and in a habitable environment. With limited land available for building in temperate zones, structures similar to the Millennium Dome could help to house the world's expanding population.
Paul Westbury, Group Director at Buro Happold, and part of the award winning design team, says "It's great to build such a beautiful, symmetrical structure, it has been a challenge to achieve such elegance and simplicity. I feel a bit like the great 19th century engineers must have felt, because the Dome is so natural and intuitive. With such an elegant design, it is so different to most modern buildings."
Buro Happold won the MacRobert Award in the face of stiff competition from three other finalists. A British Aerospace Systems and Equipment tiny VSG gyroscope, originally designed for cars is now being used for medical applications. Carbospars' smart carbon-fibre mast makes life easier for sailors, with spin-off technology monitoring buildings in earthquake zones. Digital terrestrial TV, developed by NDS, is changing the way we use TV.
The Millennium Dome, the largest fabric building in the world, is only the second construction project to ever win during the 30-year history of the MacRobert Award. In 1969, Freeman Fox & Partners won, for building the original Severn Bridge.
Notes for editors
1. The Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award, Britain's premier prize for engineering, is given annually for outstanding innovation of benefit to the community. First presented in 1969, the award consists of a gold medal and £50,000 prize.
2. The Royal Academy of Engineering aims to pursue, encourage and maintain excellence across the whole field of engineering, promoting advancement of the science, art and practice of engineering for public benefit. The Academy, comprising the UK's most eminent engineers, is able to use their combined wealth of knowledge and experience to meet its objectives.
3 Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976. The practice offers civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, infrastructure and traffic engineering, geotechnical engineering, façade engineering, fire engineering, Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis, access consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services.
