We're changing direction, FBE Society here we come!

Okay, it seems we’ve hit a bit of a bump in the road on the way to establishing the UNSW designer Collective. We basically have no means of bringing together the COFA & FBE design student communities, basically because the FBE doesn’t currently have a student community (other than OOPS, which doesn’t involve non-planning students).. Despite our continued efforts to kick-start a community at the FBE we have been met with little success, leading us to realise just how much hard work bringing Architectural Computing, Architecture Studies, Interior Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Industrial Design and Planning students together is actually going to be. We don't know exactly why it is so difficult; it might be the lack of community space (student lounge/kitchen!) OR the need for more cross disciplines events within the FBE, whatever it is we are determined to fix it (we’re even talking to the faculty about it)!

Now that you understand the amount of work facing us, imagine also trying to include the geographically distant COFA into the picture! Too much hard work for such a small group of enthusiastic individuals interested in making a difference (they know who they are ;)! This is why we have decided to modify our heading away from a united UNSW design student community towards a united FBE community, called the FBE Society, instead. Our aims & goals will remain mostly the same, with the obvious exclusion of the integration of the COFA community (although COFA students are still more than welcome to join). This change of direction will allow us to run more relevant events to FBE kids, hopefully making the idea of a united design student community a lot more attractive for everyone.

Since we are starting anew, it would be great if you could support our push to establish an FBE Society by suggesting how you'd like to see an FBE Society run, what events you'd like to see us host (built environment trivia nights, FBE pub-crawl?) and what kind of initiatives you'd like to see us support. You can do this by commenting below this post.

Finally, we'd like to thank everyone who has supported us so far and hope that this change will make it easier for us to make the FBE a much more interesting place for everyone! We've set up a facebook for the fbe society, so if you're interested then make sure you join ;)

Stay tuned,
Jeremiasz Sieczko

SONA Superstudio (Fri Week 3) is open to everyone!

So as it turns out SONA's 24hr design competition, Superstudio, is open to all Architecture Studies, Interior Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Architectural Computing students! What this means is we can form interdisciplinary teams made up of individuals from different degrees, presenting an opportunity to learn how others in the design & construction industry approach design problems and how they try to resolve them. Of course you can also just enter with friends from the same degree & compete against other degrees/disciplines (i.e. Interior Architecture vs. Landscape Architecture vs. Architecture Studies!) Either way it will most certainly to be an interesting night!

The competition will start on Friday 5th August (end of week 3) and finish 24hrs later on the 6th and is being held at our very own FBE, Red Centre this year! Entry cost is $35 for non-members & free for SONA members (mid-year membership for new members is $52.50 with numerous benefits, like a 6 month subscription to Architecture Australia, past Terra issues, & as I believe maybe even a free t-shirt!). Students are to enter as  teams of three an need to register for the event online prior to the start of the competition, you can do that here.

If want to find out more about Superstudio, visit the SONA website, or contact the UNSW SONA Rep (Barnaby) at unsw@sona.com.au & if your interested in getting into an interdisciplinary team but don't know anyone from other degrees then get in contact with us: contact@thedesignercollective.net

Hope to see you there!

the UNSW designer Collective @ SONA Superstudio (5th-6th August)

ON Friday 5th August (week 3), our friends SONA (Student Organised Network for Architecture) are going to be running this years Superstudio. For those of you who don't know what Superstudio is:

"Superstudio 2011 is an ideas competition that aims to refurbish studio culture, lay foundations for creative design solutions and assemble networks between students and the profession [architecture that is]. Superstudio is a 24hr competition with the aim to intensify the studio atmosphere to produce more innovative and collaborative outcomes" (Source)

Sounds a lot like what the Collective is trying to establish, hu? Shame it only happens once a year! Well, we're planning to make the most of it while we still can (yes, three years isn't enough)! The way it works is everyone forms teams of three (or maybe that's a maximum of three) & then given the same brief which you then have 24hrs to resolve & submit. There are many prizes to be one, including airfares to attend the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale! We'll  try to find out if entry is open to only 'architecture' students or if interior architects, landscape architects, and architectural computing students are welcome to enter as well. It would be super if they are, make things a lot more interesting. 

For those of you who are interested then stay tuned in the coming weeks & we'll let you know what is happening. It would definitely be nice to get at least one designer Collective team in there!

Competition entry is $35 for non-members & free for sona members (mid-year membership is $52.50 with numerous benefits as I believe). Definitely do it if you're a B of Arch Studies kid! For everyone else, stay tuned & we'll let you know if you can join in the fun.

Get in touch with the UNSW SONA rep, Barnaby: unsw@sona.com.au

designDrinks this Friday (22nd July) @ the Whitehouse

Location: The Whitehouse, UNSW, Kenso Campus (map)
Time: 5pm, Friday, 22 July (but held weekly on Fridays)
Fb event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=184739371585427

Description:
We're kicking semester 2 off with our weekly end of week get together at the ever awesome Whitehouse. Come down & let your hair down to try to forget that mid-year break is already over & week 2 is already on its way. There will be old school board games (maybe even uno if you're all good), yummy beverages, design talk, jenga, people whinging about studio, idea sharing + other spontaneous jazzzz.

All design students & friends welcome (seriously, bring your friends); that means it's a COFA & FBE social event, the way it should be!

Hope to see many new faces there, as well as all the previous faces, if you have trouble finding us we'll be the group of kids wearing black with blue posters on our table! Or just message us on the fb page, we'll try to keep an eye on it during the night ;)

Check out the new community blog!

So, what you think about our new designer Collective interweb super-highway online blog?  Much better than the last boring website, hu? Since we're about to officially start the Collective with the first AGM in Week 4 of this upcoming semester, we thought it was time to make things a little bit more interesting for all our rad new members! A huge eighty six (86) of you are fans on our facebook page! Now we know facebook fans aren't technically friends, and we know facebook friends aren't technically real friends, but we still felt that you deserved somewhere cool to check out Collective happenings at, well, voilà! From now on we will no longer be posting everything on just the facebook page, in fact we're going to start posting all the latest Collective chatter here first & on the facebook page second. And since it's a new semester & all we're going to make a habit of it, so you know we're not lying (at least not until week 3).

Also, while we're on the topic of facebook I'd like to remind you that facebook events aren't the only way to find out about events we're running, you can also sign up to the mailing list to get a personally addressed (we'll figure out how to do that) newsletter from us whenever something interesting is happening. Wouldn't that be so much nicer than a boring, generic facebook events? You can sign up to that mailing list here, or in the COLLECTIVE LINKS section over on the right.

Right, enough about that, don't want to bore you to death in the first blog post! In the coming days, weeks, & semesters we will be filling this blog full of events, updates, showcasing student design work and just generally bringing together the FBE + COFA design student community, you know, making it more interesting. So stay logged-in (why don't people say that anymore!?) & hopefully we'll be seeing you soon.