Cities are our natural world, created by us and yet, in their constantly shifting complexity, almost beyond our grasp. Urbanization processes do not end at the city boundaries. Almost infinite networks, alienated communication, hasty consumption and conflicts of social marginalization or economic injustice determine our urban survival. Cities form contested spaces, whose present refers back to the past, whose power structures can be identified and also changed. It is important to predict the need for change well in advance but also to be able to react to acute crises great and small with fresh solutions.

Innovations are driven on a bottom-up basis. Not infrequently they arise at the margins of society, where established structures encounter influences from without, traditional responses no longer work, or safeguards apply to some but not to others.
The projects developed in the studio situation of our Social Design program show that societal innovation–meaning extraordinary results and unexpected approaches–becomes possible where different forms of knowledge and methods interact, where artistic acumen combines with creativity from the so-called hard sciences, where design, theory, architecture and the fine arts not only pool their strategies but also enter into confrontations and alliances that can be both risky and productive.

Innovative methods construct new meanings, strengthen responsibility and thus create the preconditions for identification with one’s own actions. Students who choose the Master’s in Social Design – Arts as Urban Innovation signal their determination to play a critical and active part in influencing society and a refusal to discount the future!

Curriculum

The master programme Social Design Arts as Urban Innovation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna is oriented towards graduates from diverse fields of study, thereby stipulating work in transdisciplinary teams as the central teaching and learning approach in the programme. On the basis of professional competences acquired in their respective previous studies, students become acquainted with transcending disciplinary codes and thinking and working in greater interrelationships. Art in synergy with project-related scientific methods and knowledge is seen as a tool for urban innovation.

Duration and Scope:
4 semesters / 120 ECTS 
Graduation: "Master of Arts" (MA)

Download the curriculum as a PDF:  Deutsch  English

People

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Anton Falkeis

Architect, Vienna

Anton Falkeis studied architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he graduated in 1986. He is a licensed architect in Austria and Liechtenstein. His architectural work has been widely published and exhibited. Anton Falkeis is a JSPS fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He published theoretical papers such as "Featureless City", "Western Styles and Eastern Mind", "Film as Preview" and "Urbanizing the World".

Former Staff member
Architecture
+43 1 711 33 – 3560
anton.falkeis@uni-ak.ac.at
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Monika Farukuoye

Artist / Film Maker, Vienna

Monika Farukuoye is an artist and filmmaker living in Vienna. Her interest circles around the creation and evolution of meaning, structures of the poetic and the artistic process per se. Her films, paintings and literary works question the delimitation of the personal self and its perceptions as well as the integrity and transgression of cultural barriers.

Former Staff member
Film
+43 1 711 33 3562
monika.farukuoye@uni-ak.ac.at

Karin Fisslthaler

Artist, Vienna

Karin Fisslthaler studied Experimental Design in the department of Fine Arts at the University of Arts in Linz and finished her PhD in Practice Studies in 2019. She works in the field of fine arts, film/video and electronic music (under the name of Cherry Sunkist). 
Many of her collage-works, videos and installations stem from her response to the way media and pop culture portray the human body and how that affects notions of representation, identity and acts of communication.

Visiting Artist / Summer Term / 2020
Fine Arts, Film/Video and Electronic Music
www.karinfisslthaler.com

Oliver Hangl

Artist, Vienna

Oliver Hangl, who originally started his career as actor and scenic designer in 1993, is just as active in performative disciplines and media spaces as in fine arts exhibition sites. His works mark a consistent confrontation between man and environment. Hangl pushes at the boundaries between physical and psychological spaces. With the public space as his stage he playfully embeds a site and context-responsive set of experiences and interactions for both planned and incidental audiences.

Visiting Artist / Winter Term 2019/20
Since 1999 various teaching engagements at Art Universities ---- Since 2008 Director of project space k48 – offensive for contemporary perception in Vienna ---- Since 2010 Artistic director of WIENER BESCHWERDECHOR
http://www.oliverhangl.com/

Barbara Holub

Artist / Architect , Vienna

Barbara Holub is an artist, architect and researcher based in Vienna. With Paul Rajakovics she founded transparadiso, a transdisciplinary practice for socially engaged urbanism: direct urbanism. Visiting artist at the Dept. Social Design (2015/2016), lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology.

Visiting Artist
Summer Term 2014 - Summer Term 2016
Direct Urbanism
www.transparadiso.com
www.barbaraholub.com

Heidrun Holzfeind

Artist,

Holzfeind’s works address questions of the documentary mode in general, and the social function of architecture in particular. Based on extensive research and realized with poetic flair, her works probe the interrelations between society and identity, between individual histories and the political narratives of the present.

Visiting Artist 2019
www.heidrunholzfeind.com
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