Mark Whitby

Last updated

Mark Whitby (born 29 January 1950) is a British structural engineer, and a past President of the Institution of Civil Engineers (2001-2002). [1] He co-founded the multi-disciplinary engineering practices Whitby & Bird (later known as whitbybird), Whitby & Mohajer Engineers (WME) in the UAE, and Whitby Wood in the UK.

Contents

Early life and education

Whitby was born in Ealing, West London, the third of the six children of architect George Whitby (1916-1973, McMorran & Whitby). [2] He was educated at Ealing Grammar School for Boys (1961-1968), followed by undergraduate studies in engineering at King's College London (1969-1972). [3]

He was a British sprint canoeist, representing Great Britain at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, [4] where he was eliminated in the semifinals of the K-2 1000 m event. [5]

Career

After graduation, Whitby worked for consulting engineer Harris & Sutherland for a year, [6] followed by four years on site for Sir Lindsay Parkinson/Sir John Fairclough (AMEC) and a period on site for civil engineering contractor John Howard and Co. Ltd. [6] He then joined consulting engineer Buro Happold. A year or two later, he took up a position with Anthony Hunt & Associates. [6] While there, he worked on a series of diverse projects, including the high tech Patera Building designed by a proponent of British High Tech architecture Michael Hopkins, [7] Halley IV research station for the British Antarctic Survey, [6] and a timber dome at Crestone, Colorado, USA, with architect Keith Critchlow. In 1982, he set up a London office for Leeds-based Robert T Horne & Partners. [8]

In 1983, Whitby co-founded engineering partnership Whitby & Bird [9] with Bryn Bird, who had also worked at Harris & Sutherland. Mike Crane joined as a partner in 1985. [9] The practice later changed its name to Whitby Bird & Partners, then whitbybird. Whitby was a director of the company. Notable projects include several bridges in the UK and the British Embassies in Dublin and Berlin. He developed a media profile and started to be consulted on engineering issues for TV and radio. [10] In this period, he also co-founded energy consultant Element Energy, sold to ERM in 2021.

In August 2007, whitbybird merged with Danish engineering group Ramboll, [9] and was rebranded Ramboll Whitbybird. Whitby remained with the company, and when in April 2009 it became Ramboll UK, [11] he was named Chairman, a position he retained until he left later the same year. Before he left, he was director responsible for the company’s commission to undertake engineering services for the extension to Tate Modern (architect: Herzog & de Meuron).

Between 2010 and 2016, Whitby was a director of structural engineering consultancy Davies Maguire + Whitby, which he co-founded in 2010. [12] In that period, he also co-founded Whitby & Mohajer Engineers (later WME, sold to Egis Group in 2022) in Dubai in 2011 with structural engineer Peyman Mohajer. [12] In 2016, he set up the London office of WME with co-director Sebastian Wood, and this London practice changed its name to Whitby Wood in 2017.

Whitby served as a Member of Council at the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) from 1993 to 1996. In 1998, he became the ICE’s Vice President (Education), then served as President from 2001 to 2002. [13]

In 2006, he co-authored the Report of the First Enquiry 2006, All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group: Is a Cross-Party Consensus on Climate Change Possible — or Desirable?, with Dr Helen Clayton and Prof Nick Pidgeon. [13]

Whitby appeared with archaeologist Julian Richards in the BBC TV series, Secrets of Lost Empires: Stonehenge (1994, broadcast 1997), in which the team tried (and succeeded) to move and erect simulated standing stones using only the technologies available to prehistoric builders. [14]

Engineering projects

Structural engineering projects, and projects for which Whitby was instrumental in the construction, include:

Teaching

Throughout his career, Whitby has taught engineering and architecture students at tertiary level, and delivered public and private lectures. He has taught at Oxford Brookes University (1982-1998) (lecturer, tutor, examiner), the University of Cambridge (part time) (structural philosophy) and the Architectural Association (1984-1998) (lecturer, tutor). In 2007, he was appointed Special Professor of Sustainable Construction Professor at Nottingham University, and in March 2014, Visiting Professor in Structural Engineering at the Bartlett School of Architecture. [17]

Among the subjects of his public lectures are the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the work of engineer Peter Rice (1935-1992), how Stonehenge might have been built, and the work and professional practice of whitbybird.

Philanthropy

Whitby has been instrumental in the formation of a number of organisations that cover the broad culture of engineering. In the 1980s, he founded the Engineering Club, which is an association of engineering practices that hosts events in central London (ongoing). He also founded Engineering Timelines, an education charity that runs a website on the history of engineering. In the late 1990s, he co-founded the multidisciplinary built environment think tank, The Edge. He is President of the Trustees of CODEP (Construction and Development Partnership), a construction industry-led charity working in London and Sierra Leone, and a founding trustee of the Whitbybird Foundation.

Related Research Articles

Peter Rice was an Irish structural engineer.

The year 2001 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.

Arup is a British multinational professional services firm headquartered in London that provides design, engineering, architecture, planning, and advisory services across every aspect of the built environment. It employs about 17,000 people in over 90 offices across 35 countries, and has participated in projects in over 160 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Bartlett</span> Component of University College London

The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, also known as The Bartlett, is the academic centre for the study of the built environment at University College London (UCL), United Kingdom. It is home to thirteen departments, with specialisms including architecture, urban planning, construction, project management, public policy and environmental design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Chipperfield</span> English architect

Sir David Alan Chipperfield,, is a British architect. He established David Chipperfield Architects in 1985, which grew into a global architectural practice with offices in London, Berlin, Milan, and Shanghai.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ove Arup</span> English engineer (1895–1988)

Sir Ove Nyquist Arup, CBE, MICE, MIStructE, FCIOB was an English engineer who founded Arup Group Limited, a multinational corporation offering 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Contemporary architecture</span> Broad range of styles of 21st-century structures

Contemporary architecture is the architecture of the 21st century. No single style is dominant. Contemporary architects work in several different styles, from postmodernism, high-tech architecture and new references and interpretations of traditional architecture to highly conceptual forms and designs, resembling sculpture on an enormous scale. Some of these styles and approaches make use of very advanced technology and modern building materials, such as tube structures which allow construction of buildings that are taller, lighter and stronger than those in the 20th century, while others prioritize the use of natural and ecological materials like stone, wood and lime. One technology that is common to all forms of contemporary architecture is the use of new techniques of computer-aided design, which allow buildings to be designed and modeled on computers in three dimensions, and constructed with more precision and speed.

Buro Happold Limited is a British professional services firm that provides engineering consultancy, design, planning, project management, and consulting services for buildings, infrastructure, and the environment. It was founded in Bath, Somerset, in 1976 by Sir Edmund Happold when he took up a post at the University of Bath as Professor of Architecture and Engineering Design.

Rambøll Group A/S, also known as "Ramboll", is a Danish multinational architecture, engineering, and consulting company. In the past 25 years, the company has expanded from being a business mainly focused on the Nordic region, to having offices in more than 35 countries, with more than 18,000 employees working on projects across the world. Much of the company's activity is centred on Europe, North America, but also in emerging markets. Ramboll has been listed among the world's top 15 international design firms in 2023.

Whitbybird was a privately owned structural engineering consultancy, founded in 1984 by Mark Whitby and Bryn Bird. It was initially named Whitby and Bird, then Whitby Bird & Partners and finally Whitbybird. The practice was joined in 1984 by Mike Crane and shortly afterward Tony Greatorex who were to form the core partnership until they incorporated in October 2000. In 2005 they had 300 staff members, six offices in the UK and one in Dubai.

Ian Ritchie is a British architect who founded Ian Ritchie Architects in 1981. His projects include the RIBA Award-winning Susie Sainsbury Theatre and Angela Burgess Recital Hall for the Royal Academy of Music, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University College London and the American Institute of Architects Award-winning Royal Shakespeare Company Courtyard Theatre. Ritchie was the first foreign architect to receive the French Academie d'Architecture Grand Silver Medal for Innovation.

Frank Newby was one of the leading structural engineers of the 20th century, working with such architects as Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, Eero Saarinen, Cedric Price,James Gowan (architect) James Stirling, and the practice of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), and such engineers as Ove Arup and Felix Samuely.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Structural Awards</span>

The Institution of Structural Engineers' Structural Awards have been awarded for the structural design of buildings and infrastructure since 1968. The awards were re-organised in 2006 to include ten categories and the Supreme Award for structural engineering excellence, the highest award a structural project can win.

Sir Gerhard Jacob Zunz was a British civil engineer and former chairman of Ove Arup & Partners. He was the principal structural designer of the Sydney Opera House.

Anthony James Hunt, familiarly known as Tony Hunt, was a British structural engineer of numerous buildings, with a career spanning from the 1950s until his retirement in 2002. As a leading proponent of British High Tech architecture and with a strong interest in both engineering and industrial design, Hunt was a major player in creating the High Tech movement of Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. He formed Anthony Hunt Associates in 1962. He worked with Rogers and Foster on Reliance Controls building in Swindon (1966) which was the first building of the British High Tech architecture, or more generally the High Tech architecture style. He was also a structural engineer on the Waterloo International railway station in London (1993).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanif Kara</span> Ugandan-born British structural engineer

Hanif Mohamed Kara is a structural engineer and is design director and co-founder of London-based structural engineering practice AKT II. He has taught design internationally, is a member of the board of trustees for the Architecture Foundation and was a commissioner for CABE from 2008 to 2011. He is currently Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at Harvard Graduate School of Design. He also taught as professor of Architectural Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm from 2009 until 2012.

AKT II is a London based firm of structural, civil and transportation engineering consultants. It was founded as Adams Kara Taylor in 1996 by Hanif Kara, Albert Williamson-Taylor and Robin Adams. Now numbering over 350 employees, it is one of the largest structural engineers in London.

Fast + Epp is an international structural engineering firm headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia with offices in Edmonton, Calgary, New York, Seattle, and Darmstadt, Germany. The company first achieved international acclaim following the design of the roof structure for the 2010 Richmond Olympic Oval and has become a world leader in the design of timber and hybrid steel-timber structures.

Jane Melville Wernick CBE FREng is a British structural engineer and a consultant to engineersHRW. Having founded Jane Wernick Associates in 1998, she gave the firm to an employee trust in 2010 and it was incorporated into engineersHRW in May 2015. Previously, she worked at Arup (1976–1998). During her career with Arup, and later with Jane Wernick Associates, she was closely involved with projects including Stansted Airport terminal building and the London Eye.

British high-tech architecture is a form of high-tech architecture, also known as structural expressionism, a type of late modern architectural style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture grew from the modernist style, using new advances in technology and building materials.

References

  1. ↑ Institution of Civil Engineers. "Past Presidents". Archived from the original on 22 August 2010. Retrieved 19 May 2008.
  2. 1 2 "Mark Whitby for Architects Journal". YouTube. Architects' Journal. Retrieved 24 September 2016.
  3. ↑ "King's College London Engineers' Association". King's College London. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  4. ↑ "History". Richmond Canoe Club. Retrieved 20 October 2011.
  5. ↑ Sports-reference.com profile
  6. 1 2 3 4 Slavid, Ruth. "Prospects of Whitby". The Architects' Journal. The Architects' Journal. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  7. ↑ Jackson, Neil (1996). The Modern Steel House. New York: Routledge. p. 189.
  8. ↑ Whitby, Mark (1999). The Engineer as Session Artist (in 'Engineering Architecture' ed.). Glasgow: The Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Glasgow.
  9. 1 2 3 Fransen, Peter (2008). Thinking People: The Story About Ramboll. Copenhagen: Ramboll Group A/S.
  10. ↑ Fairs, Marcus. "Mark Whitby". Building. Building, issue 40 2001. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  11. ↑ "Ramboll Whitbybird Ltd becomes Ramboll UK Ltd". Ramboll. Ramboll Group A/S, 9 April 2009. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  12. 1 2 Hope, Gerhard. "Face to Face: Mark Whitby and Peyman Mohajer". Construction Week Online. Construction Week Online, 19 November 2012. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  13. 1 2 "Mark Whitby". Contraction & Convergence/Climate Truth & Reconciliation. Global Commons Institute. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  14. ↑ "About Julian Richards". ARCHEmedia. Julian Richards. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  15. ↑ "British Embassy". Allies and Morrison. Allies and Morrison. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  16. ↑ "30 Finsbury Square". Eric Parry Architects. Eric Parry Architects. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  17. ↑ "The Bartlett School of Architecture announces new visiting professors …". The Bartlett School of Architecture. University College London. Archived from the original on 4 November 2016. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
Professional and academic associations
Preceded by President of the Institution of Civil Engineers
November 2001 – November 2002 		Succeeded by
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.