Fifth-year landscape architecture students Ben Kazacos and Brock Hogan, and fourth-year interior design student Phoebe Baker-Gabb won the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2012 SuperStudio competition for their entry “Mark” – an interactive pad of pencils.
The three RMIT University students, collectively known as MUTT Architecture, won a trip to the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale with their winning design. Mark is an interactive wall of pencils – positioned with their rubber ends facing upwards – embedded in flexible frameworks. The idea of Mark is that when people touch and move the module, the motion is recorded by the pencils on backing paper. So, exactly what did the MUTT Architecture crew do in Venice?
“Initially we didn’t have a dedicated space at the Biennale so we walked around Venice asking people to interact with the modules,” says Kazacos. “Later some of the Biennale pavilion organizers, including those at the Australian pavilion, allowed us to place the modules outside their display spaces so that visitors could play with them; and we actually had a couple of Austrian guys offer to buy them!”
“Mark,” says Kazacos, “highlights the need to break down the hierarchy that determines how buildings are designed and how the architecture profession operates.” The team’s manifesto is to create an “architecture that is personal and collective, specific and general.”
The SuperStudio competition is run annually by the Student Organised Network for Architecture in Australia (SONA), the student group of the Australian Institute of Architects, and is sponsored by BlueScope Steel.
