At its meeting on July 24, 2025, the University Council elected German architecture theorist and university
lecturer Dr. Ulrike Kuch as the new rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Kuch is currently vice president at the
Bauhaus University Weimar and will take up her post at the University of Applied Arts on November 1, 2025, for a four-year
term.
Hildegund Amanshauser, Chair of the University Council: "We are delighted to have
gained Ulrike Kuch as our new rector, who already has relevant leadership experience as Vice President for Social Transformation
at the Bauhaus University Weimar. Her visionary yet concrete concept for the University of Applied Arts Vienna and her team-oriented
approach to leadership completely convinced the committees involved in the selection process."
Ulrike Kuch: "Becoming
Rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna is an enormous honor and joy for me. For over 150 years, the University of
Applied Arts has been combining art and society, which is what makes it unique. It is a leading international art university
and combines art, design, and science in a special way. Like hardly any other institution, it is therefore in a position to
reflect on the big questions of our time. I am very much looking forward to continuing this work together with students and
staff.
Especially in times of global upheaval and crises that have a profound impact on individual life plans,
places like the Angewandte are needed. I believe that the University of Applied Arts Vienna has a responsibility to use its
expertise in art, design, and science to promote a resilient, open, democratic global society in which minorities are protected
and in which we can all continue to live freely and sustainably in the future. I want to work with the members of the University
of Applied Arts to achieve this; that is my mission. An appreciative, reliable, and joyful atmosphere at the university is
just as essential a foundation for this as transparent communication. I am very happy that the University Council and Senate
have placed their trust in me, and I will devote all my energy to the Angewandte."
Ulrike Kuch has been Vice President
for Social Transformation at the Bauhaus University Weimar since June 2023. Kuch studied architecture at the Bauhaus University
Weimar, the Teknillinen Korkeakoulu Helsinki (now Aalto University), the Technical University of Berlin, and the Berlin University
of the Arts. She received her Dr. phil. in 2014 with an interdisciplinary dissertation at the Faculty of Media at the Bauhaus
University Weimar, where she has been working as a research assistant (Chair of Theory and History of Modern Architecture;
since 2024 Chair of Art and Cultural History) since 2015. In addition, Ulrike Kuch has been involved in the strategic development
of the Bauhaus University Weimar and the shaping of democratic processes as a member of the University Council, the Senate,
the Senate Committee for Research & Projects, and as co-director of the Bauhaus Institute for History and Theory of Architecture
and Planning. Kuch's research focuses on architecture and image, phenomenology of architecture, peripheral architectures,
and global history of architecture.
Die AngewandteThe University of Applied Arts Vienna
is one of the leading international art universities. With 2,000 students from 90 countries and around 30 fields of study
at eight institutes, the University of Applied Arts combines the arts and sciences with the design disciplines of architecture
and design.
As an art university, it develops new interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary programs that focus on social
change processes and open up future horizons.
Contact:Isabella Pohl
Head of Press
& Communications
Isabella.pohl@uni-ak.ac.at+43 664 60713 2004
