Greisch: engineer, architect

A civil engineer who graduated from the University of Liège, René Greisch completed his training as an architect in 1955. He opened his design office in 1959. For more than 40 years, he has produced diverse work that is characterised by a desire for technical and formal perfection. Among his many fields of activity, we can note his artworks that made his expertise visible throughout Europe. As early as the studies for the Lavoir viaduct, which were completed in 1968, he distinguished himself by a desire to move away from the typical ways of doing things. The bow-string bridges of the Albert canal, the Eau Rouge viaduct, the cable-stayed bridges at Lixhe, Ben-Ahin and Wandre, and the Hoge Brug bridge in Maastricht bear witness to the relevance of his research, as well as his aesthetic convictions, which were heavily influenced by modernist ideas. His virtuosity brought international renown to the greisch (beg) design office, which now has 180 employees; it should be remembered that the Millau viaduct was designed in Liège, an achievement that elevated the status of Belgian engineering.

The importance of these great works of civil engineering hides many facets of his character, particularly his work as an architect. H e designed housing but, in particular, communal facilities – alone or in a team – such as the Tri-faculty building at the University of Liège, its new Faculty of Applied Sciences, the multifunctional Hall of Mons or the facilities of the beg in the Sart Tilman Science Park ,which serve as a veritable manifesto. For many of his architectural contemporaries, who included Bruno Albert, Roger Bastin, Bob Van Reeth and Charles Vandenhove, René Greisch was a skilled and inventive consultant: the quality and boldness of the technical solutions he proposed for the calculation of their projects made him a point of reference in this area.

To avoid shedding light only on the personality and the career of a significant figure in the history of modern construction in Belgium, the exhibition also aims to analyse the methodologies and innovations that René Greisch developed. The scope of his perspective thus makes it possible to situate it in the evolution of architecture and engineering during the second half of the 20th century, and to measure the inflections that it brought to this.