Research & Teaching ︎︎︎Teaching

(1) Twelve Lectures on Building Typologies (2012–2021)︎︎︎

Entwurfsaspekte der Gebäudelehre (Design and Building Typologies) was taught each winter semester in the Master's programme in Architecture. It explored how comparative typological study informs architectural design. The twelve-lecture course formed the basis of Andreas Lechner's 2017 habilitation and of his book Thinking Design.

Fig. Conceptual calendar developed for the course in 2012.

The lectures drew on research into approximately thirty projects per building type. They compared plans and sections of public and collective buildings across a predominantly Western architectural history, examining how similar programmes occupy different structures and how related spatial configurations accommodate different uses. Comparative drawing helped students identify the spatial consequences of design decisions and assess the capacities and limits of buildings for adaptation. This established typology as a form of architectural knowledge that extends beyond functional classification.

The research was first published in German in 2018. A revised German edition and the first English edition followed in 2021: Thinking Design – Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology.

︎︎︎Thinking Design: Blueprint for an Architecture of Typology.

(2) Teaching Index since 2007 ︎︎︎  

Summer 2027 — Visiting Professor, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna
Studio 3rd year: Siemensstadt Berlin

Winter 2026/27 · Studio: Aichfeld, Upper Styria (Master)
Seminar: Typology (elective)
Privatissimum: Building Typology and Design (Doctoral School)

Summer 2026 · Studio: Work After Office (Bachelor, 3rd year)
Lecture: Spatial Concepts and Spatial Experience (mandatory, Master)
Seminar: Typology (elective)
Privatissimum: Building Typology and Design (Doctoral School)

Winter 2025/26 — Guest Professor, TU Berlin, Chair of Architectural Theory
Studio: Haus und Büro (E1, Bachelor, 2nd year)
Seminar: Typologies of Transformation (TU Berlin)
Seminar: Typology (elective)
Privatissimum: Building Typology and Design (Doctoral School)

Summer 2025 · Studio: Villa ADU Cottages (Bachelor, 3rd year)
Lecture: Spatial Concepts and Spatial Experience (mandatory, Master)
Seminar: Typology (elective)
Privatissimum: Building Typology and Design (Doctoral School)

Winter 2024/25 · Studio: Villa ADU – Accessory Dwelling Unit (Bachelor, 2nd year)
Seminar: Typology (elective)
Workshop: One-week workshop with Maike Gold

Summer 2024 — Guest Professor, Politecnico di Milano, AUID Doctoral Programme
Studio: Villa Urbaine (Bachelor, 3rd year)
Lecture: Spatial Concepts and Spatial Experience (mandatory, Master)
Seminar and Workshop: Architectural Affordances
Privatissimum: Building Typology and Design (Doctoral School)

Winter 2023/24 · Studio: Steinhaus, Steinhof, Steindorf — Günther Domenig‘s Steinhaus (Bachelor, 3rd year)
Seminar: Typology (elective)
Summer 2023 — Visiting Professor, Politecnico di Milano, AUID Doctoral Programme
Studio: Klaviatur der Vorstadt — Urban Villa (Bachelor, 3rd year)
Lecture: Spatial Concepts and Spatial Experience (mandatory, Master)
Seminar and Workshop: Counterintuitive Typologies
Seminar: Typology (elective)

Winter 2022/23 · Studio: Mixed-Use Multi-Form — Counterintuitive Typologies 3 (Master)
Seminar: Typology (elective)
Summer 2022 · Studio: 15 Ecken, ein Haus (Bachelor, 3rd year)
Seminar: Building Typology and Design (elective, University of Innsbruck)
Seminar: Design Methods (elective)
Privatissimum: Building Typology and Design (Doctoral School)

Winter 2021/22 · Studio: Education of an Architect — Counterintuitive Typologies 2 (Master)
Lecture: Design and Building Typologies (12 lectures, mandatory, Master — 9th and final iteration)
Seminar: Design Methods (elective)
Summer 2021 · Studio: House of Grain (Bachelor, 3rd year)
Seminar: Design Methods (elective)
Privatissimum: Building Typology and Design (Doctoral School)

Winter 2020/21 · Studio: Counterintuitive Typologies (Master)
Lecture: Design and Building Typologies (12 lectures, mandatory, Master — 8th iteration)
Seminar: Design Methods (elective)

Summer 2020 · Studio: X Rooms, with Visiting Professor Anna Llonch, Cierto Estudio (Master)
Seminar: Design Methods (elective)
Seminar: Typological Transformation (elective)
Privatissimum: Building Typology and Design (Doctoral School)

Winter 2019/20 · Studio: Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, DÖW (Master)
Lecture: Design and Building Typologies (12 lectures, mandatory, Master — 7th iteration)
Seminar: Design Methods (elective)

Summer 2019 · Studio: Building a Palimpsest, with Visiting Professors Jaume Mayol and Irene Pérez, TEd‘A
arquitectes (Master)
Seminar: Design Methods (elective)
Seminar: Typological Transformation (elective)
Privatissimum: Building Typology and Design (Doctoral School)

Winter 2018/19 · Studio: Grottenhof — mixed-use residential, sports and recreation centre (Master)
Lecture: Design and Building Typologies (12 lectures, mandatory, Master — 6th iteration)
Seminar: Design Methods (elective)

Summer 2018 · Studio: Jakominimarkt, with Visiting Professor Job Floris, Monadnock, Rotterdam (Master)
Seminar: AK Wohnbau — Housing (elective) & Seminar: Design Methods (elective)

Winter 2017/18
Lecture: Design and Building Typologies (12 lectures, mandatory, Master — 5th iteration)
Seminar: AK Wohnbau — Housing (elective)
Seminar: Design Methods (elective)

Summer 2017
Master Studio: Grand Hotel Lopud — extension and renovation of Nikola Dobrovic‘s 1930 hotel, Lopud, Croatia
Seminar: Potential–Program–Project (elective)
Seminar: AK Wohnbau — After Sprawl (elective)

Winter 2016/17
Lecture: Design and Building Typologies (12 lectures, mandatory, Master — 4th iteration)
Seminar: Architektur Bild Konsum (elective)
Workshop: Transformation of the Perimeter Block — one-week design research (Bachelor)

Summer 2016
Studio: Pavilion for Graz-Reininghaus (Master)
Seminar: Imagineering — Architektur Bild Konsum (elective)
Seminar: Potential–Program–Project (elective)

Winter 2015/16
Lecture: Design and Building Typologies (12 lectures, mandatory, Master — 3rd iteration)
Seminar: Imagineering — Architektur Bild Konsum (elective)

Summer 2015
Guest critic: Genoa Summer School 3, Jørn Utzon‘s Can Lis, Portopetro, Mallorca

Winter 2014/15
Lecture: Design and Building Typologies (12 lectures, mandatory, Master — 2nd iteration)
Seminar: Imagineering — Architektur Bild Konsum (elective)
Workshop: Islands — one-week design research, cartography of Graz Urban Facts

Summer 2014 — Visiting Professor, Kadir Has University, Istanbul; Genoa Summer School 2, University of
Genoa (DAD) Studio: Campus University Golden Horn (Master, Kadir Has University)
Seminar: Potential–Program–Project (elective)
Workshop: Genoa Summer School 2 — two derelict psychiatric hospitals, with colleagues Ido Avissar, Nicola Braghieri,
Cherubino Gambardella, Andrea Gritti, Cédric Libert, Enric Massip-Bosch, Morten Meldgaard, Enrico Molteni, Thomas Padmanabhan, Vittorio Pizzigoni, Franz Prati, Valter Scelsi and Andrea Zanderigo.

Winter 2013/14
Lecture: Design and Building Typologies (12 lectures, mandatory, Master — 1st iteration)
Seminar: Imagineering — Architektur Bild Konsum (elective)

Summer 2013 Studio: Memorial — remembrance site, Loibl concentration camp (Bachelor, 3rd year)

Winter 2012/13
Studio: Office Building Graz in CLT (Master)
Seminar: Imagineering — Architektur Bild Konsum (elective)

Summer 2012
Studio: The Urban Paradox, with Visiting Professors Kersten Geers and Andrea Zanderigo (Master)
Studio: Urban Entertainment Center Grieskai (Bachelor, 3rd year)
Workshop: Entrances — one-week design research at Austrian Real Estate, Vienna (Bachelor)

Winter 2011/12
Studio: Graz Perimeter Block Housing (Master)
Seminar: Imagineering — Architektur Bild Konsum (elective)
Workshop: Exhibition design, Forum Stadtpark (Bachelor)

Summer 2011
Studio: Infill and Adaptive Reuse of 1960s Housing Estates (Bachelor)

Winter 2010/11
Studio: Rooftop Extensions on Graz Perimeter Blocks (Master)
Seminar: Imagineering — Architektur Bild Konsum (elective)
Workshop: Mc Boulevard — one-week design research (Bachelor)

Summer 2010
Studio: Hafnerriegel — transformation of a 1960s high-rise dormitory (Entwerfen 4, Bachelor)

Winter 2009/10
Studio: Andreas-Hofer-Platz, Graz (Master)
Seminar: Imagineering — Architektur Bild Konsum (elective)

Summer 2009
Guest Professor, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture (Department 6, Cort R. Dinesen)
Workshop: Body Sieves (Royal Danish Academy)
Course: Core Design — Grundlagen der Gestaltung (Bachelor, 1st year)

Winter 2007/08, Summer 2008, Winter 2008/09
Course: Core Design — Grundlagen der Gestaltung (Bachelor, 1st year)

(3) (Re-)Reading︎︎︎

Reading what is already there comes before projecting what it might become. No reading is neutral, and precisely for that reason reading can be taught. Students learn to identify what an existing structure affords, and what regulation, ownership, material conditions and patterns of use constrain. The task is not simply to demonstrate that a type can be reused, but to establish how, for whom, and under which conditions it can be made operative again.
 

Drawings, models, texts and photographs are therefore instruments of inquiry rather than accessories to design. Four actions are coordinated in every course:

• reading frames the question
• drawing explores, tests and argues it
• writing accompanies design and sharpens its claims
• comparison structures inference

Comparative redrawing, in particular, trains a way of seeing that carries directly from analysis into design. Yet no drawing supplies its own criterion of relevance. Students must therefore state explicitly what each redrawing selects, what it brackets out and what it leaves unresolved. At this point, when selection becomes explicit and accountable, analysis turns into architectural judgement.

Fig. Seminar „Typology (AK Gebäudelehre)“ work by Alexander Gündera, TU Graz 2022.

Three levels

The method is not new, but it is calibrated differently at each level:

• Bachelor's: parallel redrawings of canonical projects in plan, section and axonometric build comparative seeing. They are supported by lectures on the conventions shared by architectural history and building typology.
• Master's: design-driven research studios follow a clear spine: genealogy, redrawing, analogical classification, affordance mapping and design inference. Students document this in logbooks written during the project rather than after it.
• Doctoral: method seminars address research perimeters, evaluation criteria and the discipline of argument across text and image.

Fig. Master's thesis by Alexander Gebetsroither (TU Graz, 2016), reimagining a Los Angeles highway interchange as an inhabitable infrastructure: at once public space, energy harvester and storage system, and a monument to mobility as one of the defining spatial forces of the twentieth century. Archiprix International / Hunter Douglas Award for the world's best graduation project, 2017.


Tools and judgement

Machine learning makes architectural judgement more necessary, not less. AI can classify, compare and recombine precedents, but it cannot determine whether a transformation should be undertaken here, for these users and under these constraints. Students therefore use digital survey, simulation, AI-assisted precedent analysis, life-cycle assessment and digital-palimpsest methods as evidence-based tools that support architectural judgement but do not replace it.

Studio culture

The studios are tied to research and open to the public. Each studio runs as a laboratory linked to an ongoing research group. Its outcomes are made public as exhibitions, working models and annotated drawings rather than remaining private exercises. Analogue craft and digital methods run in parallel, and students must make their argument legible in both. Andreas Lechner has taught Master's studios with visiting colleagues who extend this culture internationally (among others Kersten Geers (OFFICE KGDVS, Brussels), Andrea Zanderigo (baukuh, Milan), Job Floris (Monadnock, Rotterdam), Jaume Mayol and Irene Pérez (TEd'A arquitectes, Palma), Anna Llonch (Cierto Estudio, Barcelona)). 

Since 2012 he has supervised more than sixty Master's theses, many of them internationally awarded, alongside doctoral candidates.

Ethos

The teaching is guided by an ethos of care. Umbau pedagogy favours reversible, staged and civic transformations. It turns the studio deliberately towards the urban periphery and towards the ordinary, commercial, "low" building types that most teaching avoids. This is precisely the stock on which a civic and ecological architecture will be built.

Graduates leave with a comparative typological method, the capacity to articulate and reflect while designing, fluency in argument across text and image, and a public-facing repertoire of transformation. These skills carry equally into practice, doctoral research and civic commissions.