(Vienna, 30-07-2015) As part of the traditional summer festival at the Clinic of Dentistry of MedUni Vienna, two sculptures embodying the themes of "Aufbruch" (Awakening) and "Einkehr" (Contemplation), were unveiled yesterday (Wednesday) evening in the clinic’s Garnisonshof courtyard. Around 500 employees from Vienna University Clinic of Dentistry and invited guests of MedUni Vienna came to see the unveiling ceremony, which was also attended by Rudolf Hundstorfer, Federal Minister of Social Affairs and Consumer Protection, and MedUni Vienna's Rector, Wolfgang Schütz.
"The chosen titles of the two sculptures represent snapshots in time that every beholder will be able to identify with moments in their own personal history," explained the artist, architect Rob Krier, who created the two works in plaster in 2014 and then had them finished in the Venturi Arte foundry in Bologna. Krier, who was born in Luxembourg in 1938, was appointed to the chair of architectural design at Vienna University of Technology in 1976 and continued in this role until 1998. Alongside his construction activities at home and abroad, he always strove to establish a dialogue between sculpture and architecture. The sculptures are on loan to MedUni Vienna.
23,800 m² for dental health and research
The 14,000 m² of listed buildings belonging to MedUni Vienna’s Clinic of Dentistry, Oral and Orthodontic Medicine were modernized, renovated and significantly extended by NMPB Architectural Bureau in 2013. As a second important element of the building project, a large annex of around 9,800 m² was built in the courtyard of the listed complex in Sensengasse 2a in the 9th district of Vienna. It is here that more than 25,000 patients a year are treated in the treatment area on the ground floor and 1st floor, which is divided up into individual bays.
The room layout with treatment bays is a central feature of the new unit system, in which students are permanently assigned to a bay where they can master the different specialist areas under the supervision of teaching staff. This section also houses the new dedicated outpatient clinics for cosmetic dentistry, endodontics, functional disorders, laser, hypnosis and cosmetic periodontal surgery so that they are incorporated within the unit. The basement contains a seminar center and a lecture theatre to accommodate 200 people.