About bau

The mission of the bau institute Otranto & New York is to support and enhance the creativity of fellows and students in architecture and the arts. Through residencies and workshops it provides uniterrupted time for work, reflection, research and interaction in a setting of cultural interest and natural beauty in the Italian seaside city of Otranto. It provides an international forumn for cultural exchange on building, arts and urbanism. The bau Institute offers a summer session in Otranto in June and a fall session in New York in October.

Founder and President, of the BAU Institute, Paola Iacucci has been associated with Otranto since 1980. Paola studied architecture with Lodovico Quaroni in Rome and is partner in atelier.a in New York and Rome. She has taught architecture at Columbia University and internationally for 30 years. Arts Residency Director, Marthe Keller is a painter working in New York and Italy. She has exhibited internationally since 1974. Her work is in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum. She is editor of the American Abstract Artists Journal and teaches in the Hunter College Art Department.