Students from Oman at RWTH Aachen
30 Bachelor students from GUtech University in Oman visited RWTH Aachen during an international design workshop. The students from the Department of Urban Planning and Architectural Design met students and employees from the RWTH Aachen Chair of Urban and Regional Planning in Aachen. The workshop was funded by the DAAD and GUtech University.
"We all gladly came together, which helped make the workshop atmosphere a bit more personal and relaxed," said Anne Eaton, who was in charge of RWTH Aachen's coordination and organizatino of the content of the three-week long workshop. The goal was for students from the sultanate to learn about the planning and building culture of other countries, for example in Germany, during the workshop. "It is important for the design process, to be able to think into planning tasks that are not immediately familiar," describes Martin Werminghausen, Professor at GUtech. He accompanied the students and will continue to teach design after their return.
A topic of the workshop was urban development of Bendplatz with new forms of housing from student housing to modern townhouses as a colorful quaret with diverse user groups and activities. The same problem was given to both groups of students making, exchange with RWTH Aachen architecture students possible.
The guests, many of whom were in Germany for the first time, also had a diverse program full of excursions to the brown coal strip mine, Düsseldorf, Maastricht, and tour of the exhibit of exemplary housing projects from the NRW Architecture Guild.
Dipl.-Ing. Rolf Westerheide, Deputy Head of the RWTH Aachen Institute of Urban and Regional Planning, expressed his enthusiasm for the results: "This academic exchange between the two universities has been possible twice now. It clearly demonstrates, that the high financial and organizational effort is worth it."
Anne Eaton