ARCHDIPLOMA 2021: A repository for ideas

Around 90 diploma projects from the Faculty for Architecture and Planning at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) from the last two years provide a view of the current generation of emerging architects.

As the students usually define the subject for their own project, the exhibition provides a portrait of the emerging generation of architects, and provides an insight into their longings and dreams, as well as questions and points of criticism about our society. In the polyphonic mosaic of works, focuses emerge that are worked on by the multitude of research areas of this faculty — one of the largest architecture faculties in Europe.

The individual diploma projects are presented in a context of different thematic focuses and issues as well as sometimes contradictory narratives. Any clear categorisations or fixed order are deliberately avoided. In-line with Jorge Luis Borge’s Chinese encyclopaedia, the thematic focuses are also not intended to supplement one another, they follow different kinds of logic. The system always remains incomplete, it can always be extended in different directions and is never universally applicable.

Accompanied by a website and a catalogue, the exhibition places particular emphasis on the haptic qualities of the work. Book objects and models enable visitors to immerse themselves in the works. The exhibition concept was developed by a group of curators at the Institute of Architecture and Design in cooperation with the Berlin office Something Fantastic.