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
