For risk of sounding like an ideological and sentimental romantic (as far as building can allow) I love love love south american engineer/architects simply because, especially the one I will use as an example later, they make incredible beauty from the most deprived (comparatively) of conditions. Perhaps it is born from a need to 'make do' coupled with the determination and deeply instilled sense of architecture of European history.

Anyway, one of the people I most idealise in an engineering sense: Eladio Dieste. A Uruguyan prodigy of brick. Seriously- the most amazing structures with the most modest of materials, the humble hand made brick.

Shelter for gas station: The Gull. One brick thick shell vault... with one tiny column to hold it up. The man's a genius!!! Brick is a surprisingly good choice as it soaks up the mortar well and lends itself to double curvature with relative ease.

above and beyond the call of duty.. making a rose window out of brick. Again, one layer thick, built on pre tensioned steel rods but frankly, amazing. The final effect is that of floating hexgonals (the sunlight renders the steel invisible.)

And this, a water tower he designed.. it's more impressive when you think that they didn't have the use of cranes etc.. that it took a team of about ten men with only wooden scaffolding to build a hugely tall structure which doesn't buckle under it's own slenderness.

Anyway, he's better known for his shell structures- gaussian vaults in particular. Beautiful, wave like structures perfectly resisting buckling through their own double curvature. They're engineering mastery, take my word for it.

So. One plan is to move to an underdeveloped country to make a name for myself. It's too difficult to be a virtuoso designer in the age of computers and massively complicated teams of engineers for hugely complex buildings designed by multinational-trans-global-partnerships in some 21st century Tower of Babel. Besides, Engineers never get the credit, it's always the bloody architects. Case study: the Millaut bridge. Who designed it? Foster I hear you say? AH, so he personally did all the clever calculations for such a tall and slender structure did he? And I suppose he also determined the road slab should be rolled onto its column supports as oppose to built straight onto them?
Especially where shell structures, large span structures and bridges are concerned, it is the playground of the engineer. Wish the architects would stop poking their noses into it, choosing the facade or the colour of the stays and then calling it their own.