Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes

The Simone de Beauvoir footbridge was designed by Dietmar Feichtinger. We talk with an architect who is as attentive to the natural as he is to the urban environment.

He designed the Simone de Beauvoir footbridge, won the European competition for the Mont Saint Michel pedestrian causeway bridge and was responsible for the footbridges at La Défense and over the Rhine, but Dietmar Feichtinger does not consider himself a bridge specialist. “I don’t like the term specialist. Our work covers a hospital, universities, office buildings, toll plazas and cinemas as well as bridges.”

He does not prefer horizontal to vertical lines and adds that he is careful never to repeat himself. “I don’t to get into the habit of designing only office buildings, only bridges or anything else. Habit kills creativity.”

Every location calls for its own project. Treating every projectas a new one fitting into a specific location is a good way of avoiding routine. This involves seeking a new solution every time, endeavoring to be highly modern, highly contemporary and above all avoiding stylistic precepts. Every location, every natural landscape, every urban setting requires its own response.

This can mean attracting attention, like the Simone de Beauvoir Footbridge, or blending into the landscape like he causeway bridge at the Mont Saint Michel Bay. The design of his bridges thus varies considerably. But relationships and analogies can be found with other–at firsglance quite different– structures. The causeway bridge, for example, bears a resemblance to the Klagenfurth hospital, of which a scalemodel takes up half the office where we are talking with Dietmar Feichtinger. “In both projects, the direct connection tonature was important to us.”

All-revealing architecture
Everywhere – if it’s in Paris or the Mont Saint Michel Bay – Dietmar Feichtinger focuses primarily on fitting his projects into their setting. This, he strongly believes, is the fundamental of architecture, a guiding principle rather than an obstacle, and he pays close atten tion to the structure of his work.“The bones of the building, that is what every architect should be interested in.” His bridges are, in that sense, a stylistic exercise: “This is all-revealing architecture, you can conceal nothing. It is the basic. principles that make the project.”

Biography
Dietmar Feichtinger, a native of Austria, studied architecture at the Technical University of Graz, graduating [summa] cum laude in 1988. After gaining initial experience with Prof. Huth, Prof. Giencke and Prof. Klaus Kada, he moved to Paris in 1989, and founded in 1994 his firm Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes, with headquarters in Paris, and in 2002 he opened a subsidiary in Vienna. Feichtinger has taught at a number of universities since 1994 – the University of Paris-La Villette, the RWTH Aachen, the University of Innsbruck and the University of Vienna. He received a wide range of prizes and distinctions. for his work.