Published for last week's student architecture
Congress in Adelaide, the
Congress Book begins a larger project to compile the history of these radical events.
Download your own
free copy here, and help us fill in the blanks!
Okay, there are two shameless things to admit here, the first is that I am one of the editors of this project, and will be seeing it through from here towards a comprehensive book ready for early 2012.
The second is that this edition (Version 1) has been distributed by the Freerange Press, which is not really embarrassing, because Freerange is awesome for pushing out three great books already this year, but I felt compelled to fill you in.
Anyway, the point of this project is to collate the disparate history of student-organised architecture congresses/conferences/festivals that have happened in New Zealand, Australia, and PNG since 1963 (we think) when Auckland got the ball rolling. Since then it has returned three times to NZ, in '71, '83', and recently in Wellington in 2007, all up there have been maybe 28 of these things, but amazingly they have survived with very little organisational consistency -hence the disparate records. We have the sneaking suspicion that Congress has played a significant role in the culture of the architecture in NZ and Australia, and so far the conversations we've had have got us even more convinced, and not just a little bit excited.
As the self-appointed custodian of this modest project, I would love to hear from you if you've attended one of these, the download has a full list of events that we know about, so check it out to see if you can fill in some of those emptier pages...
If you'd like to add something to the project, drop a comment here, or get in touch with us directly:
Byron Kinnaird:
byron.kinnaird@gmail.com
Barnaby Bennett:
barnaby@projectfreerange.com
A glimpse of the NZ visits...
And so it goes...
Congress Book download.