Alternative Building Technologies (ABT) between Research and Practice with Flavia Matei (Mycelium), Beatrice Aimée (Rammed Earth), Marlene Wagner (Clay Straw)
Public Panel in English:
Three TU Wien alumni present three different materials and construction methods, discussing them through the lens of specific projects, locations, and practical experience with alternative building technologies—navigating the interplay between research and practice. Short presentations are followed by a discussion with students and guests covering potential, obstacles, hopes, and frustrations; construction sites, laboratories, and workshops; self-building and industrialization; discipline and discourse; as well as sustainability, regeneration, resources, and restoration—with a focus on Austria, Ghana, Romania, and South Africa.
In the framework of UE Diversity in Building Sciences & Environment, WS26/27
supported by: Claiming*Spaces Collective, Institute of Art and Design
Building Sciences & Environment, Institute of Architectural Sciences, TU Wien
Flavia Matei is an architect, researcher, and educator at Studio BASEhabitat, Institute for Architecture at the University of Arts Linz, Austria. As a material expert, she has been co-leading the Material Science module within the BASEhabitat Master of Architecture program and developing a focus on regenerative building materials – including earth, plant fibers and mycelium. Her work explores regenerative design, material ecology, and building economies, with a particular interest in the socio-political systems shaping the production of space. Flavia earned her master’s degree in Architecture at the Technical University of Vienna, where she developed affordable housing models for informal communities in Romania. Through her research and architectural practice, she challenges extractivist models of architecture and urban development and advocates for an environmentally and socially just transformation of the building sector outside capitalist logic.
Beatrice Aimée studied architecture in Venice and graduated with distinction at Vienna University of Technology. As a young practitioner her emphasis is based on regenerative material practices, vernacular knowledge and culturally rooted forms of spatial production. Her work is guided by a holistic understanding of space, grounded in the earth and its materials. She has been involved in sociocratic cooperative housing projects and social housing projects in Vienna with WUParchitektur. Beatrice implemented educational projects with the non-profit Archifair and leads building and material workshops with the association YEB – Young Earth Builders. Personal interests have led her to mix her hands in various small to medium construction, artistic and agriculture projects with Kleine Stadtfarm and Die Feldversuche, with Klasse für Alle at Angewandte, in exhibition and cultural work with the African Diaspora Community, as well as taking long-distance cycling journeys across West Africa.
Marlene Wagner practices, researches and teaches in the framework of "Social Architecture". Transdisciplinarity and transformation guide her work on space and design knowledges at the intersections of theory and practice, design research, feminist and postcolonial critique. As a co-founder of the non-profit architecture practice buildCollective she realised internationally awarded projects of educational, social and technical infrastructures. She has been teaching at the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, University of Art and Design Linz, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences a.o. She designs and develops formats of learning and tools engagement and has been instrumental in the set-up of an urban mobility lab. Marlene is part of Claiming*Spaces Collective at TU Wien, international research projects, cultural initiatives and co-founder of the Vienna Architecture Summer School. www.marlenewagner.online
