Thomas Feichtner

Life

Thomas Feichtner was born to Austrian parents in Vitória, Brazil, in 1970. After attending school in Linz, Austria, and Düsseldorf, Germany, he studied and completed a degree in industrial design at the University of Art and Industrial Design Linz, from 1990 to 1995, where he later taught from 2002 to 2005. In 1997 Feichtner founded his own design studio and initially designed sports equipment and industrial goods. Starting in 2005, he increasingly began to design products for Austrian fabricators and traditional crafters, along with experimental individual pieces for exhibitions. Between 2001 and 2009, he was a partner in a visual communications agency in Linz and Vienna. His son Ferdinand was born in 2008. Feichter has been a professor of product design at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, Germany, from 2009 to 2014. With his wife Simone Feichtner, he lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

Works

Even as a student, Thomas Feichtner designed numerous products for the Austrian sporting industry, like skateboards and snowboards for Heavy Tools or ski bindings for Tyrolia and Fischer. He later designed skis for Head and Blizzard. In the area of visual communications, Feichtner worked for companies like Swarovski, Adidas Eyewear, European Capital of Culture or the British-Israeli designer Ron Arad. After his early successes as an industrial designer, Feichtner turned to experimental product design in 2005, working with traditional fabricators such as J. & L. Lobmeyr, Porzellanmanufaktur Augarten, Carl Mertens, Neue Wiener Werkstätten, Wiener Silbermanufactur and Stamm. He has also completed freelance projects in cooperation with Vitra und FSB. His works have found their way into major design collections, like that of MAK – Austrian Museum for Applied Arts/Contemporary Arts.

Awards