Christian Menn

Christian Menn (born March 3, 1927 in Meiringen, Canton of Bern) is a bridge designer from Switzerland. He led his own engineering company in Chur, Switzerland from 1957-1971. From 1971 until his retirement in 1992, he was a professor of structural engineering at ETH Zurich, specializing in bridge design. In his retirement years, he continues to be a consulting engineer in private practice.

Menn graduated from high school (Kantonsschule Chur) in 1946, followed by structural engineering studies at ETH Zurich. He received a diploma as Bauingenieur (civil engineer) in 1950. From 1950 through 1953 he worked for construction engineering companies. Then, he returned to ETH Zurich to become assistant to Pierre Lardy, a well-known professor of structural engineering, and was awarded a PhD degree in 1956. He gained practical experience working for companies in Paris and Bern before starting his own consulting company in 1957.

Menn’s bridges had to be designed for the times: "Structural Analysis found itself at the time in the transition from descriptive graphical analysis to abstract analytical statics". (Menn, 2002) Menn worked very closely with Pierre Lardy during the beginning of his career, emphasizing the design of structures based on aesthetics and economy. Menn believed that economy, serviceability and safety of the bridge would revolve around aesthetics.

Menn has stated that an engineer achieves safety and serviceability by understanding the underlying scientific principles, but that economy and elegance are achieved through non-scientific ideas. An engineer must also have aesthetic creativity. Menn describes his bridges with abstract theoretical models which allow him to analyze bridges and find stresses and distribution of forces within the structure. Building on this framework, he is able to devise numerical calculations which can eventually be used in computer modeling of the structures.

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