An Irish engineer is helping to build a TV tower in Beijing for the Olympics, writes Dick Ahlstrom
An engineer from Monaghan is helping to build a 240m "twisted doughnut" in Beijing, the China Central Television (CCTV) tower that will beam the 2008 Olympic Games around the world.
Rory McGowan is a graduate of DIT Bolton Street who also studied at Queen's University Belfast, has worked on four continents as a structural engineer and is a director of the international firm, Arup. He comes to Dublin next Tuesday to deliver an Academy Times lecture about the ambitious CCTV project.
The tower is known as the twisted doughnut because of its unorthodox design, a radical structure conceived by the daring Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. It is a €445 million project that will provide a 53-storey building offering 580,000sq m of office space in the heart of Beijing.
McGowan joined Arup in 1986 and has worked around the world on a variety of projects. The CCTV tower is one of the most challenging however and McGowan's description of how he is overcoming a sequence of engineering challenges to get the building into place before the Games begin in 2008 should make an intriguing story.
The project is particularly tricky given Beijing is in an earthquake zone. The tower must meet strict requirements on how the building will behave in an earthquake, and is designed to withstand a quake so strong it would only be expected to occur once in 2,500 years.
Work started in September of 2004 and it has been McGowan's job to turn Koolhaas's spectacular ideas into solid concrete, steel and glass.
He has worked on development projects in Cameroon, Tanzania and other countries in Africa and also in India, the US and across Europe.
One of six children, he went to school at St Macartan's College in Monaghan town and took his Leaving Cert in 1981 aged 16. He studied at Bolton Street but also in Queen's where he became one of the first students from the Republic to go North to study as a result of the 1984 Anglo-Irish Agreement.
• The Academy Times lecture is organised and sponsored by The Irish Times, the Royal Irish Academy, Depfa Bank and CRH.
It takes place at 6.30pm in the Burke Lecture Theatre, Arts Block, Trinity College, Dublin.
The event is free but places must be booked in advance given the limited number of seats available. Booking is possible on the Academy's website, www.ria.ie and a limited number of tickets will also be made available over the phone on 01-6762570.