when i was in mexico 1.5 years ago i met a group of students doing the build section of a design/build studio and i'm pretty sure they were from the university of applied arts vienna, and i'm positive they were from vienna. really, they inspired me to go to architecture school. i ran into them in a rural mexican town, seriously the last place you'd expect to find a group of european kids, they invited my girlfriend and i to check out their project and we stayed for a couple of nights. the project itself was amazing. they were building a community educational center to help teach the farmers about sustainable agriculture techniques, something the region apparently needed desperately. the structure itself was wild, i can email you pictures if you want.

they seemed extremely well-funded (although mexico is dirt cheap), had great motivation, great purpose, great professors, and were, like i said, inspirational. they had even flown in some big shot german or austrian structural engineer to help them out for a week.

i remember them talking about the admissions process, and it sounded scary. but they certainly were talented and were getting a great education.

thanks hhw. can you post the images? or if no, you can send them to my email address, click on my screen name, then 'email'. thank you.

the issue of flying to vienna to take the exam aside, i actually like the idea a lot. even if you don't get in, it's probably a memorable experience.

doesn't greg lynn teach there too?

heller... i think it would be cool if you could post those images in the gallery

yes, zaha, lynn and prix.

hi javier, hope you're feeling better.

thanks! yeah, I think that I'm finally over the mono. Five weeks!! Insane!

well, i uploaded some pictures to the student gallery. so, as for what's happening in the pictures: the roof was made of bamboo and was constructed laying on the ground. after completing the roof, they made the pulleys (they look kind of like bare teepees), also out of bamboo, and raised the roof using their own muscles. the stage you see the roof in the pictures is students fine-tuning the shape of the roof so that, when filled in with concrete and other materials, it will capture and funnell water into a tank to save it for the dry season. after the fine-tuning, the pulleys were removed and replaced with bamboo beams. i didn't keep in contact with the students, so i'm not really sure whether they finished the project. they didn't have much time left when i was there.

underneath the roof would be an open space (without walls, i believe) that would serve as a meeting place for local farmers. the owner of the property, who studied permaculture, already had a decent sized organic farm just down the hill from the construction site that would also serve as a learning center.

what really blew my mind was the use of bamboo. they called it poor man's steel. i had no idea how versatile it is: light, strong, flexible, and cheap. i wonder if there's room for bamboo here in the U.S. it sure grows a lot faster than trees.

i don't know if my description was clear enough. the main component of the project is the roof. i don't have any good pictures showing the whole project, but the roof forms half of a ellipse (more or less), with one end up in the air and sloping down to the ground at the other end, all the while sloping towards the center of the ellipse. does that makes sense? i'm not sure where the focal point (where the water drains to) of the roof is. anyway, it was totally rockin. you would never expect to find anything like in the middle of poor, rural mexico.

okay: last description. it looks kind of like an elongated section of a spiral staircase.

thanks heller! look nice!

that's beautiful. a comparatively low-tech way to build a sophisticated form.

is bamboo really strong enough to carry the weight of poured concrete? and would the structure hold together without some kind of steel rebar?

anyway...thanks for posting.

i forgot to mention it wasn't just concrete in the gaps. the concrete was poured over chickenwire and, i believe, old coffee or feed bags or something like that, both acquired locally. i got the impression that the roof wouldn't be completely full of concrete, only a thin layer. i couldn't find any numbers on bamboo's strength, but i remember seeing some impressive figures at some point.

i think it would be interesting, but very interesting to look @ the la paz, catolica.are they publishing ??

i never got to see those wiel arets chapellls, promising oscar niemeyers interpretation of the truth, the light, the purity, light, concrete light
dang

huh - mao, are you drinkin?

mauOne is ALWAYS drinking, you'll learn that eventually...

mau on E is what his name really means

hahaha

you guys got me, my mask has been removed :op,

anyway, now that im somewhat sober, those images reminded me of some images arets showed once, of some chapels he was going to build in africa i think, with reinforced concrete and bamboo instead of steel but i never saw any follow up, the resulting spaces reminded me of projects by niemeyer, vast scale, raw material and lots o light.
economic too

hic.up!

besides posting, i'll put calling an ex and buying plane tix online up there with 'dumb things ive done while drunk'
wheee...

Hey anotherquestion. . .still questioning, I see, good for you.

There are some great german language schools that I would have loved to have applied to . . . if only they weren't german language, a language I have no interest in learning (at the risk of sounding like an idiot)

Similarly, has anyone participated in the [url] http://www.iaacat.com/ [/url] program? Thoughts?

I started teaching with Greg Lynn in his studio at the Angewandte last year and the only German word I knew at the time was Gemutlichkeit (not that useful.) I moved to Vienna from LA last fall. The studios here have been taught in English for the past 6 years, (some of the electives are in German) so its possible to enroll without speaking German.

The entry exam is more intense in some ways than the application process I went through in the US, but it´s much more personal and thorough (plus much, much shorter.)

Email me or post any questions...

hi jj, thanks for the link.

brennanbuck, i'll definitely email you.
you dont by chance know a student with images of the finished project (above) it would be great to see them.

Hey guys,

Its nice to read to read so much about Die Angewandte, I have recently got an acceptance letter from them for their postgraduate Msc program in Urban Strategies (Urban Technique)

http://urbanstrategies.at/program/urban-technique/

Does anyone here have any reviews about this program?

I have even got through the AA- Emtech, SAC & The Berlage & have to choose amongst these :/. All of them are very highly ranked schools/programs and have great architects heading them. Personally, I find Die Angewandte, most experimental and exciting (but a bit too theoretical) of all these.

I already hold a license as an architect in India and have 2 and half yrs of work ex on me.

Do let me know if any of you, have any reviews about the MSc program,

Also, people looking forward to network can send me an e-mail on ankitsavla@hotmail.com, would love to hear from you! :)

Brennanbuck.. hoping for a reply from you.

-Ankit

Hi, I hope to be starting university of applied arts for fashion design next year at summer. And I have a lot questions, and if someone who's studying that too wouldn't mind to help me it would be wonderful. :)

hello so I have applied for the university of applied arts vienna and I have to hand in my portfolios and if accepted take a practical exam (for painting btw )and It's really important to me to get accepted and ive been searching everywhere to find someone on the social medias or forums who is a students too and I can get infos and answer my questions so It would be great if anyone can help . Thank you!