Generally
speaking, architects are the ones with the visions. Engineers are hired to get
the job done. However, as designs have become grander and less conventional,
engineers have had to be more creative in realizing their visions. Peter Rice
is a perfect example. He was the lead structural engineer on iconic buildings
such as the Sydney Opera House, the Centre Pompidou, the Louvre Pyramid, and
the Lloyd’s of London Building. In his relatively short life, Rice helped
drastically alter the look and possibilities of urban architecture. Marcus
Robinson celebrates Rice’s legacy in the quietly reverential documentary An
Engineer Imagines, which releases virtually today, in select markets.
During
his tenure with the Arup Group, a design and engineering consulting firm, Rice played
a leading role in the construction of the aforementioned landmarks, as well as
Paris’s La Grande Arche de la Defense, the science museum and park complex of
La Villette, and the new façade of Lille Cathedral. They are all stunning
looking buildings, but Robinson weirdly spends a disproportionate amount of
time discussing the lighting scheme Rise designed for the Full Moon Theatre,
exclusively utilizing moonlight. Granted, it is a neat idea, but the Full Moon
gets more screen-time than the Louvre Pyramid.
Frankly,
the cinematic look of Rice’s projects really is the saving grace of Robinson’s
film. The pace is slow to the point of even being sluggish, while the
remembrances of Rice’s friends and colleagues are as respectful as you would
expect, but not especially colorful. To make matters worse, Rod Morris’s score
is exactly the kind of unobtrusive background music that could very well lull
many viewers to sleep.
You
really have to be passionate about architecture to make it through An
Engineer Imagines—and that is a problem. You should not have to be that
keen to be intrigued by the making of the Sydney Opera House (after all, Magneto
destroyed it in X-Men Apocalypse and Jackie Chan fought on its famous
roof in Bleeding Steel). A documentary like this should try to make
architecture in general more accessible to untutored amateurs, with open minds.
However, for those who are willing to work for it, Robinson’s film gives
viewers a greater appreciation of the role of the engineer in general as well
as Rice’s significant contributions to the field (and city skylines).
An
Engineer Imagines is
educational and sometimes heartfelt, but it represents a missed opportunity to
get people to think about and engage more with architecture as an art form—and engineering
as a calling that shapes our lives and environments. As a film, it just isn’t
very cinematic, despite the visually striking buildings it documents. Only
recommended for insiders, An Engineer Imagines releases virtually today,
via Music Box Films StreamLocal.
