Superstudio 2010

It's Friday morning. It's 7am. It's amazing we've all made it to the train station on time. 30 bleary-eyed VUW SOADers congregate at Wellington railway station to embark upon a journey to the supercity.  We may have been coerced with free train travel, mention of snacks and of course a good old party, but the reason we're up so damn early is to get to Superstudio.

Superstudio is an event run by your very own SANNZ (Student Architecture Network of New Zealand) in association with SONA (Australia's equivalent) with the intention of fostering socialisation and activity throughout the architecture students of NZ.  Their goals are very much like our own here at Critters - enriching our own education by taking responsibility, and ensuring our interests are explored.

So, come 8pm, we're in Auckland. We're hyped from the hilarious games on the train, and exhausted from the confinement. Maybe I shouldn't have done that all-nighter the night before either. Ohwell. We make quite the entrance into a lecture hall occupied by Auckland University and Unitec students. It's fair to say the Wellington contingency outshone the Auckland schools combined, in both number and spirit.

Time to hear the brief and meet the team mates.

Define 'place x', which lies between the boundary of the urban and the suburban. Activate said place through play. Names of teams are called from a list. I hear the names called, I don't know the people but I find myself with a fourth year VUWer and a first year Unitecette - Sophie and Anna.

By now it's 10.30. I've been awake for near on 40 hours by now (my own fault) but we sit down to start to chat about ideas. We agree that 'play' needn't necessarily require the interaction of other people - it is a highly subjective, individual and personal experience. The mind plays all day long, when we're strolling down the streets, seeing some things not others, imagining the extents and possibilities of everyday objects. So we also agree that place x could be these tangential explorations of existing places, that seem to happen on journeys between home and work for instance. But now it's midnight, and we're tired, so we retract to our sleeping places and agree to meet back at Unitec in the morning.

9.30am Saturday. Breakfast! Delicious muesli and yoghurt and things laid out to feed our hungry bodies and minds. With a bit of sleep under my belt, and a couple of cups of tea later, I'm almost functional. So, where were we? Oh yeah, place x. We're also in Auckland, which as you know is a massively sprawly city, with motorways galore and a hugely underutilised  public transport system. This totally works with our idea of a journey, and how many times have you sat on a bus or train and imagined the lives of those familiar strangers who surround you? That is play, my friends. It may be invisible, but it sure happens.

11am. So, feeling a little bit inspired, we walk in the rain to Mt Albert train station. The first train arrives within minutes. Where are we going? Who cares, we just want to take some photos of people riding trains. So we do. And I get told off, by this guy.

12pm Tail between our legs, we jump off at the next station, look around and wonder when the next damn train will be. Half an hour. Bleck, waiting around in this weather is no fun. Where the hell are we anyway? It says Morningside Station. There's a thing on the ground with BroTown characters saying 'Morningside 4 life'. Rad, we're officially in BroTown. I guess it's where the show is set, so we decided to name our all-girl group BroTown as an homage to the journey.

12.30pm. Back on the train to Unitec we get the shots we're after, and after another wet walk back into the first year studio we get to work putting together photoshop collages and talking through our ideas with the guest tutors. By this stage we'd decided that the way we wanted to activate place x through play was to create an interface for daydreaming.  To merge the imagination and reality.  Our first talk with a guest tutor was actually kind of discouraging, he seemed to want to 'architecturalise' our idea by turning it into some kind of kiosk, whereas we were pointed down a much more fanciful route. Talks with the following tutors were awesome though, they were totally on the same page and super encouraging. What a relief.

6.20pm. Ten minutes before hand in. Collages done and our idea clarified, I'm desperately trying to throw them into powerpoint. It's crashing. It's not doing what I want it to. Shit! We were getting by in such a relaxed manner up until this last moment.

6.30pm PHEW. HANDED IN.

Straight to the lecture theatre to present.

Boy do I wish I had video footage of the hilarity which ensued. Man. You really had to be there (and you should have been).  A personal favourite quote came from our very own Maxwell while describing his exciting bike ramp scheme:  "even though, I have not played sport in many years, I still retain enough momentum, to ride on a bicycle up these timbers."

There were presentations featuring Justin Bieber, a centre which acted as a drug den by night and kindergarten by day, a dance sequence with with improvised sound effects. Some presentations were highly theoretical. Some were beautifully poetic. Some were very similar to one another. All were fantastic, thoughtful and incredible considering the short amount of time in which they were produced.

7.45pm Awards Ceremony!

First of all, prizes were awarded to specific categories.

The Oscar for best performance went to......... none other than Maxwell for his enthusiastic and beautifully awkward eloquence we know so well.

The colouring in book for team with best renders went to...... the kids who did the drug den / kindy for their 'atmospheric' perspectives.

Time for the finalists.

Third place went to a team who made a wormhole which makes time stop (don't we all want one of those).

Second place went to the beautifully performed dance by brick boys.

First place.... drumroll.... BROTOWN!  Wooooohoooooooooo! The judges loved the scheme, fantastic!

10pm. Party time.  Subsidised drinks. Dancing til dawn.

7am. Still in town, so we see the kids off on the train, followed by a hungover ferry ride for a sleep and some breakfast from some wonderfully hospitable parents. Beautiful day on the North Shore. Time to relax til we fly home on monday.

All in all, good times. See you next year, Superstudio.