Surveying for architectural students: as simple as possible – as much as necessary

Abstract. More and more, existing buildings – and particularly historic buildings – are becoming part of the daily business of every architect. Planning and designing in the field of architectural heritage requires not only knowledge of contemporary building techniques, design processes and national and international guidelines, but also a deep understanding of architectural heritage, its evolution and genesis, the building techniques that have been applied, materials used, traditions, etc. In many cases, it is indispensable to perform a detailed building survey and building research to achieve an adequate design concept. The Department of History of Architecture and Building Archaeology of TU Wien has an extensive tradition of building research and over the course of the past 10 years, has developed a teaching workflow to introduce architectural students to building archaeology und surveying methods for building research. A sophisticated, temporally interwoven combination of courses and lectures on different topics related to building archaeology and surveying rapidly gives the architectural students the right tools for this important but often neglected task.