Superstudio 2018 - invitation to the final in Bratislava

Over the past weekend, the first round of the eighth edition of the architectural and urban planning competition for university students, SUPERSTUDIO, took place. In a total of six cities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, student teams tackled a very challenging brief over 24 hours, prepared this year by the respected architect and urban planner Marthijn Pool from the Amsterdam office Space&Matter. A total of 18 advancing teams will compete for victory, including prize money of 50,000 CZK, on March 10th at the A4 space in Bratislava, where the public is also invited.
“We face an exceptional challenge: dwindling resources, population growth, and climate change require us to accept the densification of life in the city. How can we achieve a greater degree of social cohesion, and thus more happiness, in the urban centers of the future? By ensuring housing for people who do not want or cannot live with a mortgage,” wrote architect Marthijn Pool in his briefing for the first Czech-Slovak edition of SUPERSTUDIO.
Pool tasked students working in two- and three-member teams to design a residential project on a small plot in the city center of their choice. An important part of the intention also includes a thoughtful business model of how the project could realistically function and what it would bring to the community of people and the entire city. It was not only about the architectural processing of the building; students had to primarily consider other (often overlooked) aspects of their intention.
The task requiring very conceptual thinking on the problem was addressed by a record number of teams this year. A total of 98 teams registered for the first rounds held concurrently from March 2nd to 3rd, 2018, in Prague, Liberec, Brno, Ostrava, and for the first time in Bratislava and Košice. Just like in the first rounds, the projects will also be evaluated by an expert jury in the final. The jury will include architect and educator Prof. Michal Kohout from the UNIT architekti office, Martin Jančok from the Slovak studio PLURAL, and the author of the brief, Marthijn Pool himself.
The final evening, consisting of presentations from the advancing teams and subsequent jury critique, will take place this weekend on March 10th at 5 PM in the A4 cultural space in Bratislava. The public is also invited to the free-access event without an admission fee.

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