Ove Arup, aged 11, in 1906.
Ove Arup, Born 1895
Engineer and Philosopher
Sir Ove Nyquist Arup was an English engineer who founded Arup Group Limited, a multinational corporation that offers engineering, design, planning, project management, and consulting services for building systems. Ove Arup is considered to be among the foremost architectural structural engineers of his time. Arup was born in Newcastle to the Danish veterinary surgeon Jens Simon Johannes Arup and his Norwegian wife Mathilde. Arup attended the Sorø Academy in Denmark—a boarding school with many influences from Dr. Thomas Arnold of the Rugby School. In 1913, he began studying philosophy at University of Copenhagen and in 1918 enrolled for an engineering degree at the Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, specialising in reinforced concrete. Arup was the design engineer for the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia from the project's start in 1957 to its completion in 1973. An iconic building making groundbreaking use of precast concrete, structural glue and computer analysis, this made Arup's reputation, and that of his firm, despite the extremely difficult working relationship with the architect, Jørn Utzon. As principal shareholder of the Arup company he gifted its ownership into a permanent trust for the benefit of its present and future employees.
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