DIETRICH | UNTERTRIFALLER ARCHITEKTEN

The climate in Vorarlberg, the westernmost state of Austria, is good for high-grade architecture. The Baukünstler [Master Builders] first gained international attention as pioneers in the nineteen-eighties. They were followed by a generation that returned to its state after having studied and gained work experience elsewhere, to make use of these favorable basic conditions and immediately start to build. Helmut Dietrich and Much Untertrifaller are two of the most successful members of that generation. Over the past fifteen years, they have won several important competitions and already created a broad oeuvre that reaches from a single-family house to an apartment house, from a local museum to a festival hall, from an industrial building to university sports grounds, and from the interior of cafés to the comprehensive revitalization of old structural fabric.

They studied at Technische Universität Wien and were influenced by the great teacher and architect Ernst Hiesmayr (1920 to 2006). Their early buildings already proved their talent: both the Haus Preuss in Schnepfau (1989) by Helmut Dietrich and the Silvrettahaus on the Bielerhöhe (1992) by Much Untertrifaller were awarded prizes, and several articles were published on them. In 1992, they won the international competition for Festspielhaus Bregenz [festival hall Bregenz], and in 1993, they opened their joint office in Bregenz. The festival hall was fully redesigned and extended in two phases and completed in 2006. Moreover, they designed the public bathing and event facility arlberg.well.com in St. Anton, the first passive-house school in Klaus/Vorarlberg, the new event and music hall in the Vienna city-hall complex, as well as many other large and small-scale architectural projects. Independent of the size of the buildings, they are devoted to quality in the design, architectural expression, and details.

For a number of years, the D | U architects have been commissioning Bruno Klomfar, also from Vorarlberg, to take pictures of their works. Klomfar specializes on architectural photography and has gained a recognized position in the demanding Viennese scene. The way he looks at edifices and rooms demonstrates his deep sensitivity for architecture and topography, but also the fact that he develops his own artistic viewpoint. His photographs do not only document buildings, but comment on them, as it were. Thus, the architecture exhibition on the two Vorarlberg architects Helmut Dietrich and Much Untertrifaller is also a presentation of photographs by the Vorarlberg architectural photographer Bruno Klomfar.