More Room for Teaching and Research
As a university of the future, we are constantly further developing our research and teaching. Since 2019, one focus has been on the digital economy. We have established new professorships in this field and launched a new master’s program. To give the additional staff and students enough space to work, we have rented a new building and set up two new auditoriums.
The new AR (Administration & Research) building is located in the PRATER GLACIS urban development project area right next door to Campus WU. With its 4,300 m2 of usable floor space, the building encompasses 90 offices and 146 work stations and provides space for administrative units, the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics, and the Competence Center for Nonprofit Organizations and Social Entrepreneurship. The sustainable office building with its innovative wooden façade is almost entirely energy self-sufficient. For this, it was awarded pre-certification in gold from the German Sustainable Building Council.
Directly on Campus WU, we also created additional work stations and two new auditoriums with 60 seats each. More than 500 work station relocations and structural adaptations were necessary to make these changes.
Medium- and long-term space utilization concept
New working and studying environments resulting from digitalization also require innovative concepts for using space. Extensive interviews with a wide range of stakeholders gave us an initial idea of what the university of the future might look like and what infrastructure we would need to continue further developing our teaching and research. Based on these findings, we will be developing a concept for the campus of the future.
Sustainable Campus
In 2019, WU became Austria’s first climate-neutral university. Although we are proud of this, we also see it as our responsibility to improve even further through the conscious use of resources. We compensate for those emissions that cannot be avoided. Due to the sustainability measures we have implemented, we paid less for offsets in 2020 than we did in 2019.
Certified environmental management
WU’s excellent environmental performance has been certified by the EU’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and ISO 14001 since 2016. In 2020, we successfully passed our recertification audit.
EV charging station
In cooperation with Wien Energie, we have created two places in our garage for charging electric cars. These charging stations are a further contribution to environmentally friendly mobility in addition to the over 1,000 bicycle parking spaces on campus, our on-campus bicycle repair station, and an e-bike charging station.