Vienna, Austria—The University of Applied Arts Vienna (Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien or UAAV) has undergone fundamental change from its beginnings as the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts to its present status as an internationally recognized art and design institution. Founded in 1867, the school was closely associated with the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, which was established in 1863 and eventually evolved into the MAK (Museum für angewandte Kunst). Since its founding, the UAAV has been at the forefront of Austrian art and design, serving in fin de siècle Vienna as one of the central institutions associated with Jugendstil and the Vienna Secession and evolving into a highly regarded international university. It has been the home of many highly influential artists and designers, among them, Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, Otto Wagner, Oskar Kokoschka, and, more recently, Wolf Prix, Jil Sander, Greg Lynn, and Zaha Hadid. A competition for an extension to the UAAV presented an opportunity to develop a new architecture commensurate with the burgeoning international status of the school and its teachers.

Our proposal calls for a dynamic arrangement of a cantilevered bar branching out of an existing building designed in 1965 by Karl Schwanzer. It houses a library, an auditorium, and a two-level courtyard. The addition forms a new ground that links the school with its surroundings, confronting the vital challenge of incorporating new and old architectures and also developing new spatial opportunities to express three essential elements that define the culture of the institution: discourse, production, and display. These are not abstract concepts but palpable organizational principles that guided our design, from an overall urban concept to the tectonics of the building itself.

The three major buildings that occupy the UAAV campus are the MAK, the Ferstel (the historic origin of the school, built in 1867), and the Schwanzer (a utilitarian modernist loft building). Although the neoclassical facades of the Ferstel and the MAK and the grid of the Schwanzer building all are rigidly regular, the buildings are starkly dissimilar, thus calling for an extension that unites them and integrates them into the surrounding neighborhood.

Finalist, International Competition

Principals: Jesse Reiser + Nanako Umemoto

Design team: Michael Overby, Juan De Marco, Hillary Simon, Eleftheria Xanthouli, Joy Wang, Becky Quintal, Kris Hedges, Massimiliano Orzi

Interns and assistants: Ryosuke Imaeda, Shosuke Kawamura

Structural engineer: Arup & Partners, New York

Architectural consultant: Gollwitzer Architekten, Metzgergasse, Germany

Model fabricator: Re:art, Yasuhito Furuyama, Japan