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Summer University

Project Design Work

Interdisciplinary collaboration in multicultural teams

GBS participants get to put theory into practice in their final project work, dealing with a real-life object in the City of Vienna.

This allows to apply the relevant knowledge to an integrated planning task in a multidisciplinary peer group of students with diverse backgrounds and from disciplines such as architecture, planning, engineering, social sciences and more. The final outcome is a design project, which is presented to a jury on the very last day of the program.

Project work 2023

In 2023, the final project work was an examplary renovation of heritage protected pavillons at the historical Otto Wagner Area (OWA) in Vienna. The participants could choose between renovating a pavillon into a student guest house or a public museum. Important aspects to consider were energy efficiency, building technology and regenerative architecture. See the project outcomes below.

Earlier group projects

The task of the project work in 2022 was to develop a sustainable residential area in a devolopment area in Vienna. The groups had to consider aspects of decarbonization, social inclusion and climate change adaptation.

In 2020, the task was to turn the Otto Wagner Area into the first Positive Energy University Campus worldwide - a unique challenge well mastered by the students! Have a look on the innovative designs in the Booklet!

Earlier group projects were dealing with the renovation of residential buildings, design of student guesthouses and (re)densification.

Poster examples
(click to enlarge)

Scientific publications

Two academic papers were published by a project team of 2020 and one even received the “Best Paper Award” at the SBE21 Heritage Conference!

The “Otto-Wagner-Area” as a Positive Energy Campus

The OeAD student housing was also part of a research project under the leadership of Schöberl & Pöll GmbH and the partners Central European University, Institute of Architecture and Design of the Vienna University of Technology and LANG consulting, who carried out a feasibility analysis about an attempted re-development of the area in Plus Energy Standard.


Funded by The Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation, and Technology and FFG Forschung wirkt.

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