Ian Liddell CBE
Founding Trustee
“The training and development of competent and imaginative engineers is essential for making our country and the world the place we wish to live in. Young engineers must self learn from working with others and from hands on experience in challenging situations. The Happold foundation is able to help them find opportunities and guide them in this process.”
Ian Liddell began his career with Ove Arup and Partners working on the design for the roof of the Sydney Opera House. He was the project engineer for the iconic timber gridshell structure for the Mannheim BGS multihalle. He became involved with engineering tensioned fabric structures in the early days of this technology and he had the good fortune to meet many interesting engineers like Frei Otto and Walter Bird. His last fabric structure was the Millennium Dome.
He was a founding partner of BuroHappold along with Ted Happold, and before the group left Arup on 1st May 1976, he bought a house in St James’s Square that housed the whole firm for their first few months. His now wife, Suzie, looked after admin on the office, and as the only paid member of staff bought most of the wine and food for their suppers.
His commitment to education has continued, and he currently serves as a Royal Academy Visiting Professor of Engineering Design at Cambridge University. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers and a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Ian’s outstanding contribution to engineering was recognised when he was awarded with a CBE in 2000.
Outside of building engineering his main interest has been with sailing boats and he has been President of the Cambridge University Cruising Club (they mostly do Team Racing) for about 10 years.
Ian has been a trustee of the Happold Foundation since its work first started in the 1990s.