The depletion of its directors is understood to have caused much soul-searching at Ove Arup and its multidisciplinary arm Arup Associates over the past 18 months. The conclusion reached was that the engineers’ design skills and aspirations suffered from working in architect-dominated teams and being isolated from the rest of Ove Arup.
They addressed the problem by parachuting in Tristram Carfrae, a director and star engineer at Ove Arup & Partners in Sydney, to “rebuild, repopulate and re-enthuse” the engineering side of Arup Associates. Forty-year-old Carfrae took on the task in January, at the invitation of his old friend and colleague James Burland.
“I invited Tristram over as my design partner. He will reinforce the type and quality of engineering that goes into all Arup Associates’ buildings,” says Burland.
So, why is 45-year-old Burland leaving at the end of the year? He is quitting to set up a new practice and pursue his own design ideas with new engineers. “I did not want to end up managing all the little relationships within a 120-strong practice. I’ve seen my predecessors stay too long,” he says.
Burland explains that Carfrae’s recruitment of new engineering talent in the practice is intended to dovetail with the ascendancy of new architects after his departure. “I can finish the Manchester stadium job with Tristram and then make room for other people to have the same fun. It is up to the next tier down to choose their new leaders.” The aim, he says, is to ensure that there is diversity of architectural ideas to complement Carfrae’s engineering talents.
What equips Carfrae for this task? One colleague describes him as “very bright, straight, tough, and one of the best engineers around. He’s always looking to push things forward and he leads by example.”
Carfrae, a clean-cut, laconic Australian, knows what he has to do: “We have assumed that good design will just happen while we talk about organising ourselves and getting good financial results. We can no longer assume that – we have to encourage it.”
This encouragement started in January when Carfrae spearheaded a recruitment drive for engineering talent from the UK, South Africa and Australia, mainly from within Ove Arup. Since then, he has overseen the practice’s design portfolio jointly with Burland, encouraging engineers to play as equals with architects in conceiving design solutions. Carfrae says judiciously: “James’ departure is a wonderful opportunity for us. It is allowing the next layer of designers to take up their own identities.”
Despite Carfrae’s efforts to smooth the transition, the departure of Burland’s ego will no doubt leave a big hole. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. His use of the acronym JB in self-reference – “There was a big worry that engineers only came here to work with JB” – is a clue to the man’s character. Although a certain amount of self-satisfaction may be warranted (he has won countless architectural competitions for the practice, and his design talent was rewarded in June with a Royal Academy Grand Award for Architecture), it is easy to see how he might drown out other voices. As Carfrae says: “When you get a very strong design person leading the practice, you tend not to get much growing in their shadow.”
Burland’s smooth-talking presence certainly looms large in this interview. He bursts into the room and talks animatedly about the designs for the City of Manchester Stadium. Carfrae engineered Burland’s dramatic design for this. It features a version of the cable-net roof that the pair designed for a bid for the Sydney Olympic Stadium. They never got to build that one (they lost the competition to HOK+Lobb), and Carfrae says he never quite got over it. “I was struck dumb for about a year. To do an Olympic stadium in your home town would just have been …” he tails off.
His spirits have clearly been lifted by the chance to rework the design for the Manchester stadium with Burland. Carfrae has engineered a pioneering cable-net structure, stayed at ground level, that deforms the stadium’s circular roof into an undulating oval. Carfrae describes the structure: “You build it in a floppy state on the ground over the seating bowl. Then you pull very hard on ground-level pulleys at all four corners of the stadium. That tensions the cables and lifts the whole net structure up, over a period of two days.“
Has the construction budget of £55m constrained the design? “It just means I have been pushing to make the architecture out of the bits you have to pay for – the circulation, the roof, the seating bowl,” says Burland.
Both agree that their experience in Australasia has equipped them to handle the cost and time constraints of the Manchester project. Says Carfrae: “All the jobs in Australia have a tight budget and timescale. In any smaller market, people want to spend less, so you have to think faster.”
Enabling works for the stadium at the Eastlands site in Manchester have started. The main design-and-build contract with Amec is due to be signed by the end of this year. The stadium will be built for the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and will become Manchester City’s ground in 2003.
By then, Burland’s new practice, already established in new offices in central London’s Charlotte Street, will no doubt be flourishing. And Carfrae will probably be heading back to Australia, having revitalised the engineering discipline at Arup Associates. What also seems likely is that the dynamic working partnership between Burland and Carfrae will run and run.
