Three new endowed professorships for timber construction and research in timber construction

Objectives of the endowed professorships

Endowed professorships allow universities sufficient leeway to open up new research areas and to respond to current trends. They also meet the industry’s demand for excellently trained experts and co-operation partners at the universities and increase the overall attractiveness of the research location.

The aim is to further expand the enormous developments in materials and technology that have taken place in recent decades and to prioritise the timber construction sector in particular at Austrian universities. Specific expertise and targeted research in the field of timber construction and sustainable building, especially in connection with the training of architects, building physicists and structural engineers, is necessary. The endowed professorships will be filled in 2023.

Endowed professorships at a glance

• Vienna University of Technology (“TU Wien”) Timber construction and design in urban areas
  With the Endowed Professorship for “Timber Construction and Design in Urban Areas”, the expertise of TU Wien in the field of architecture and civil engineering will be expanded to include timber construction. The new focus is primarily on multi-storey timber construction, additions of storeys, gaps between buildings and infrastructure buildings with timber in connection with urban expansion and redensification in inner-city areas.
• University of Innsbruck: Architecture, resource efficiency and fabrication in timber construction
  The focus of this professorship is on fabrication, prefabrication and modular timber construction. It thus adds to the University of Innsbruck's already wide expertise in the field of the development and modelling of mechanical fasteners in timber construction.
• Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU): Sustainable building architecture in the spirit of the New European Bauhaus
  The third endowed professorship focuses on the interdisciplinary development of solutions in line with the principles of the "New European Bauhaus" as well as on sustainable, space-, resource- and energy-efficient construction with bio-based building and construction materials. BOKU already has a high level of technical expertise in the fields of wood technology, wood construction elements and research into resource availability which can be further expanded by the endowed professorship.

The forest and timber value chain

With 300,000 employees, the forest and timber industry is one of the largest employers in Austria and secures jobs in the regions. The use of wood as a raw material, construction material and energy source is not only of enormous economic and social importance, but also offers great ecological benefits. Timber construction is the greatest lever for a sustainable use of wood with long-term carbon capture. When using wood as a building material, construction materials with a high carbon footprint are substituted and CO² is stored at the same time. This makes the use of wood an active contribution to climate change mitigation.