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Franz Dischinger (8 October 1887 - 9 January 1953) was a pioneering German civil and structural engineer, responsible for the development of the modern cable-stayed bridge. He was also a pioneer of the use of prestressed concrete, patenting the technique of external prestressing (where the prestressing bars or tendons are not encased in the concrete) in 1934.^[1]

In 1922, he designed the Zeiss Planetarium with Walther Bauersfeld, using a thin-shell concrete roof in the shape of a hemisphere. Their system was subsequently patented, and Dischinger published a paper on the relevant mathematics in 1928.^[2]

For the 1938 design of a rail suspension bridge (not built), he had studied historical bridges incorporating inclined stay elements, such as those by Ferdinand Arnodin and John Roebling. He went on to design the 183m span Strömsund Bridge in Sweden, completed in 1955 and generally considered the first of the modern tradition of cable-stayed bridges, although there had been many isolated examples of the bridge form before then. This employed a steel deck and cables, with large spacings between the stays typical of the early designs. It appears in Strömsund's coat of arms.^[3]

Other key works include:

• Großmarkthalle, Basel, Switzerland, 1929 (dome roof)
• Market Hall, Leipzig, Germany, 1930 (polygonal dome roofs)
• Koblenz bridge, Germany, 1935 (three arch concrete bridge)
• Aue bridge, Germany, 1936
• Cologne Rodenkirchen Bridge, Cologne, Germany, 1954 (with others, including Fritz Leonhardt)

1. ^ Troyano, Leonardo Fernandez: "Bridge Engineering: A Global Perspective", Thomas Telford Publishing, 2003
2. ^ Billington, David: "The Tower and the Bridge", Princeton University Press, 1983
3. ^ Troyano, op. cit.

• Franz Dischinger at the archINFORM database
• Page at Structurae.net

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