The Herbert Eichholzer Awards for Architecture, awarded every two years on behalf of the Cultural Office of the City of Graz to talented students of architecture at Graz University of Technology, were announced in 2009 as an ideas competition on the subject of the University of Arts Graz (KUG).
To fill the (educational) gaps in arts studies (painting, sculpture, new media), the site for a new building of the University of Arts was considered, with the aim of forming an "art axis" along the Leonhardstraße, between the University of Music and Performing Arts, MUMUTH and the new building of the KUG Reiterkaserne the corner lot of Leonhardstaße and Merangasse.