NEMONE Routh is the Aga Khan’s racing office manager, based at Aiglemont Training Centre in France. On Wednesday night she was in Dundalk along with her brother Kieran and sister Heidi attending the premiere of the movie An Engineer Imagines – the story of their father Peter Rice.

Born in Dundalk, Peter is better known around the world than he is in his native land. At the age of just 25, this graduate of Newbridge College and Queen’s University Belfast’s first job was working on the roof of a building that has become an iconic feature worldwide, the Sydney Opera House. You might think that it could not get better than that, but Peter’s career was only starting its upward trajectory when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died at 57.

An engineer with an artistic flair and a penchant for thinking ‘outside the box’, his legacy as a structural engineer is three of the most important architectural works of the 20th century: the aforementioned Sydney Opera House, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Lloyd’s Building in London. The latter is already a Grade 1 listed building and recognised as ‘one of the key buildings of the modern epoch’. He also worked on the Louvre Pyramid, the Mound Stand at Lord’s cricket ground and Kansai International and Stansted airports.

The 90-minute movie, directed by Marcus Robinson, is in cinemas around Ireland, and will also be shown on RTÉ later this spring. Featuring home movies of Peter, his wife Sylvia and children, interspersed with footage of some of his feature works, and tributes from fellow engineers, architects and others.

During March, Louth County Council is hosting the Peter Rice exhibition in two galleries. The larger exhibition will reflect his work and inspirations; the second is a photographic exhibition of a selection of the projects he was involved in.