Umbau is a new school of architecture.

The word umbau is German, meaning renovation, continuity, cultivation, bridge, conversion. No word could be more symbolic for our times. Umbau will offer an accredited graduate master's degree in architecture. We will stress design process, non-linear thinking, flexibility, suppleness, and a built poetic.

Umbau will have studios in Staunton, VA; Vienna, Austria; and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In Virginia we will conduct formation.
In Vienna we will conduct intensive research.
In-between we will organize mentorships with the best architects in and around the world.
The last year is to be spent in Sarajevo, going there to rebuild, learn, actualize and heal.

Sarajevo is a microcosm of all the world's tensions: it is imperative that Americans gain exposure to the multi-layered flux of the non-western world. Umbau will build bridges of culture, language, and humility. We will collide Walmart with madrasa; strip development with Italian hill towns; American pragmatic convenience with Viennese meandering waltz. And that is just a beginning. The underlying motto of Umbau is to BUILD PUCCINI. This means to realize the timeless, the beautiful, the sensuous-all that the operatic work of Puccini represents. Umbau will work to undermine the general understanding of architecture as elitist, arrogant, expensive.

The current millennia demands something more.
Architecture must heal, serve, give, and challenge.
The Umbau graduate will be in high demand in numberless capacities.
Umbau will thrive on the breaking of paradigms.

We are in formation. Get ready. Keep watch.