Stéphane Du Chateau

 

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"A structure is only a specific organisation of the material for a stable space organisation."

-- Biography: Stéphane Du Chateau was born in Siberia, Russia, in 1908; he belonged to a franco-polish family (his ancestor was an officer in Napoleon's army and stayed in Poland). He studied at the Academy of Engineering in Lwow (today Lviv, Ukraine). After taking part in WWII (he fought in Poland in 1939 and in France in 1940 before being held as POW in Germany), he completed his training at the Institute of Town Planning in Paris and finished it at the Polish School of Architecture in London.

Though he began working in 1937 in Poland, his career really started after WWII as he made plans for the reconstruction of the city of Caen in Normandy. He was very interested in tubular constructions which was up till this time used only in constructing scaffoldings. He creates then with Paul Bandow the society Tubetal. After many projects, studies and tests, using welded tubes in building constructions began to be credible. His idea of the "tridirectionnelle" was concreticized in the Grandval dome for which he invented an assembly node of moulded steele.The "tridirectionnelle SDC" was the first construction system using steele structures; it was followed by many others: Pyramitec, Tridimatec, Unibat, Sphérobat are the most famous, the latter concerning aluminium systems. Stéphane Du Chateau took part in the producing of more than 250 projects: the swimming pool of the Stade français in Boulogne (1962), the swimming pool of Drancy (1968), Saint-Jean-Baptiste church in Chartres-Rechèvres (1960-1962), the Credit Lyonnais tower in Lyon (1981), the culture house in Meshed (1978), the Baltimore airport (1979), the Hassan-II mosque in Casablanca (1991).

Stéphane du Chateau died in 1999 and is buried in the Montmorency cementery near Paris, where many famous Poles were also buried, like Adam Mickewicz or Cyprian Kamil Norwid.

 

Hassan-II mosque in Casablanca (the second-largest mosque in the world)

 

Crédit Lyonnais tower in Lyon