01. July 2025
The Science Award
for Architecture from the Bundessektion Architekt*innen and the Research Award for Architecture from the FBundeskammer der
Ziviltechniker*innen 2025 go to two graduates of the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts.
Naomi Neururer has been awarded the 2025 Research Prize for Architecture
by the Austrian Chamber of Civil Engineers for her thesis entitled ‘PLASTI.CARE - Transforming Short-lived Plastic into Durable
Architecture for a Selfcare Centre’. Supervised by Greg Lynn, Neururer successfully completed her studies at the I oA of the
University of Applied Arts Vienna in June 2024 with this thesis.
Nikola Beim has been awarded
the 2025 Science Prize for Architecture by the Austrian Federal Section of Architects for her dissertation ‘Architecture of
Memory: Monuments Beyond the Digital.’ Nikola Beim completed her doctoral studies at the I oA of the University of Applied
Arts, supervised by Mario Carpo, in July 2024.
The dissertation maps the history, development, and transformation of
memory and monuments in Western society from Modernism to the present, to digital and beyond digital, reflecting upon Alois
Riegl’s Modern Cult of Monuments, written in 1903. It examines the digital documentation tools enabling the transition of
Riegl’s preservation theory characteristic of the turn of the twentieth-century Vienna into the digital realm while redefining
the monument’s values in the twenty-first century. Furthermore, the dissertation proposes a new representational model of
monuments within the digital environment called ‘digital palimpsest,’ serving as a digital spatial framework offering a multiversal
image of historical monuments. Thus, the dissertation has a transdisciplinary character, bridging architectural history, preservation,
design, and technology.
Both prizes will be awarded on 16 October at the Architekturzentrum Wien.
