SuperStudio student competition

Architecture students from around Australia will compete this weekend in the 24-hour SuperStudio design competition with the working title Shifting Sands. Across the country, each team of three students will receive their competition brief on Friday 3 August, and have only until Saturday evening to present their submission to a state jury panel.

The studio brief has been developed by creative directors Mark Raggatt and Tim Pyke of Ashton Raggatt McDougall (ARM), both of whom tutor in design at Melbourne’s RMIT. The idea is to encourage teams to challenge their preconceptions and create a theoretical response to the topic. Their solutions will be unveiled through visual and oral presentations at the end of the 24 hours. Each state will select finalists who will then have ten days to polish their submission and prepare for the national judging process in late August 2012. The national winning team will receive return flights to Venice and entry to the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Organized by SONA (Student Organised Network for Architecture) the student body of the Australian Institute of Architects, SuperStudio is an annual event aimed at developing a studio culture among architecture students and promote networking opportunities between the universities and across different study years, as well as encouraging analysis and critique.

“Danny Brookes from SONA is driving a more conceptual approach to the brief, and was keen to expand it beyond just building program or typology,” says Mark Raggatt. “So he asked Tim and I if we’d set the brief for this challenge. We jumped at the chance because we thought it would be fun. It gives Tim and me a chance to think about how architecture might be in the future and what’s peculiar about the way architects think, about the games we play. So SuperStudio gives us the chance to investigate some of those things and maybe expose some of that wit. It’s also an escape from some of the drudgery (of both practice and study). The good thing about this project is that they’re working in teams. Your experience of university often misses this, and some students don’t like this side of study, but mostly you spend the rest of your life working in groups, so it’s an important skill to learn.”  

Follow SuperStudio here.