Louth engineer commemorated as An Post issue stamp marking 50th anniversary of Sydney Opera House

As part of a celebration of the world famous Sydney Opera House's 50th birthday, An Post have launched a commemorative stamp, designed to honour the late Louth engineer Peter Rice.

Peter Rice was born in Dundalk, spending his childhood on Castle Road. Rice received his primary degree from Queens College Belfast before obtaining a masters in Engineering from Imperial College London.

The Irish man acted as Structural Engineer on some of the most important architectural works of the 20th century: the Sydney Opera House, The Pompidou Centre in Paris, The Louvre Pyramid, and the Lloyd's Building in London.

Sydney Opera House was the first building Rice worked on, at the age of 23. Completed in 1963, it has since gone to become the most iconic manmade landmark in Australia.

Co-founder of  Rice Francis Ritchie Engineers, Peter Rice was described in his 1992 obituary by the Independent as "The James Joyce of structural engineering".

The commemorative stamp was unveiled onsite at Sydney Opera House by the Consul General of Ireland Sydney, and features a design of the iconic building by Irish artist David Rooney.

Rooney said that the design of the commemorative stamp was informed by a concert in the Sydney Opera House he attended shortly before the Covid-19 lockdown, "my visit in 2020, coincided with electronic musician and composer Jon Hopkins' show. Hopkins literally shook the building to its foundations! Those reverberations stayed with me and seemed to echo the art of the First Nations Australians which also informed the design".

In 1992, Rice was the second Irishman to be awarded the prestigious Royal Gold Medal for Architecture by the Royal Institute of British Architects, the first was Michael Scott, designer of Busáras.

He died later that year of a brain tumour, aged 57.