Architecture Between Responsibility and Integrity

How can architecture assume social responsibility without compromising aesthetic quality? What role does timber construction play in the transformation of our built environment? And how can a balance between design quality, economic constraints, and sustainability be maintained within increasingly complex planning processes?

In this lecture, Much Untertrifaller addresses these questions through selected projects and insights from his international practice. He illustrates how architectural integrity, responsibility, and quality can be meaningfully aligned, highlighting contemporary challenges in planning and building, the relevance of sustainable and material-appropriate strategies, and the understanding of architecture as a socially engaged cultural practice.

Much Untertrifaller is an architect (Dipl.-Ing.), co-founder and CEO of Dietrich Untertrifaller Architekten. He studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology and has been a driving force behind a new, responsible approach to alpine building since the early 1990s. As early as 1992, he set a milestone in contemporary alpine architecture with the Silvretta House on the Bielerhöhe in Vorarlberg.

In the mid-1980s, he began his long-standing and successful partnership with Helmut Dietrich. Following their competition win for the Bregenz Festival Hall, they founded their joint practice in Bregenz in 1994. After the competition success for the extension of the Vienna Stadthalle, a second office was opened in Vienna in 2004. This was followed by a branch in St. Gallen after winning the commission for the new university sports facilities at ETH Zurich. From 2015 onwards, further offices were established in Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, and most recently Belgrade.

Today, Much Untertrifaller leads Dietrich Untertrifaller Architekten together with Dominik Philipp and Patrick Stremler. A member of several chambers of architects in Germany, France, Luxembourg, and Austria, he regularly shares his experience internationally through teaching, lectures, and professional events.

Through his work as a design advisory board member for several cities and municipalities, as well as his frequent role as a competition and award juror, his contribution to building culture extends far beyond the architectural practice itself. Alongside ecological, social, and economic sustainability, questions of societal relevance, as well as aesthetic and atmospheric qualities, fundamentally shape his approach to planning, building, and professional practice.