A will-it-won’t-it cloud skulked above as the 24 Hour Design Competition kicked off a few weekends ago — the third in a row sited in our mighty city. A collaborative effort between Student Architecture Network of New Zealand (SANNZ) representatives from our three schools of architecture, this year’s competition asked students to envision Ākarana. A post-apocalyptic setting required brand-new infrastructure for a ravaged city (funded by completely and believably real gold deposits in the Hunua Ranges).

As is tradition, the competition kicked off at a separate venue: The Bank in Grey Lynn. Now an event space, until 2016 this neoclassical shell played host to the suburb’s ASB branch. On this Saturday afternoon it played host to the cutting edge of musical experimentation. Each team was randomly given a genre and an hour to devise a band name and logo, then compose and perform a one minute piece. It would seem late nights in studio and modelmaking are great muses for some serious angst. The winning team, Le Hummingbirds, stunned with an incredible operatic number, coming away with a secret advantage and a massive Resene water bottle each. This icebreaker was judged by SANNZ alumnus Siān Singh and SANNZ Wellington’s Emily Hall (reconnoitring for next year’s competition in Pōneke Wellington).

The 24Hr ‘24 brief was catered somewhat intentionally to our judges, with a decisively urban angle. Set in the year 2124, Ākarana is painted as an emerging nation. Crippled infrastructure and a radioactive city centre has led to Mayor Wayne Brown III commissioning our assemblage of firms to develop proposals for an array of civic installations. Funded by the aforementioned gold deposits (that triggered the war in the first place) teams had to navigate this new future’s needs, devising ways to produce food, harvest and distribute power, and most crucially, play golf. Threatened by the ever-present New Zealand military (based at the now fully equipped base at Devonport and led by a somehow still-alive Winston Peters), the gauntlet was down and the game was on. Programmes were handed out at random, and sites were left up to students: an exercise in planning as much as one in architecture.

Unitec’s studios once again played host to this endeavour — ten teams surrounded with ample space devising and deploying some of the messiest media processes I have seen in my four-year history with this competition. Perhaps the most boggling aspect of 24Hr ’24 was the (successful) tidy-up effort at the end. Feeding (in both senses) the endless machine that is design was the Resene supply table — keeping everyone well stocked with modelling materials and M&Ms. At least one team worked through the night after being kicked out of Unitec at 11:00pm — truly embodying the satirical nature of the competition (much to our judges’ chagrin).

Come Sunday morning, Le Hummingbirds’ secret advantage was revealed: as part of the victory celebrations for Ākarana, Mayor Brown III invited each teams’ band to play, with each scheme as a possible venue, which now needed to be adapted to accommodate the smorgasbord of styles. Le Hummingbirds were granted the power to swap genres with any team, and in doing so, became Le Rappingbirds. The real cruelty behind this curveball might have been the forced re-living of the previous day’s performances. Keeping with the musical theme underscoring the event, Sheets By Salas had students dancing for their dinner (giving away five double passes to this year’s Country themed Architecture Ball): one minute of nearly improvised choreography to Shania Twain’s Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under? — with five minutes to plan and practice.

Responses were innovative to say the least. Faced with a lack of power lines, third place takers DJ XI conceived a massive water wheel at the portage between Te Waitematā and Te Manukau, genetically modifying pigeons to charge and then lay electricity-filled eggs in specially designed nest-boxes dotted throughout the city. GR8 Architects (who were blessed [or cursed?] with the opera genre post-switcharoo) envisioned a flying military base, armed with a secret weapon powered by the collective singing voices of our judging panel, protecting us from Winston’s army of mutated sheep and taking out second place.

Winners JEAA conceived a hospital (replete with models at multiple scales) that tapped into our collective spirituality to heal — a crucial piece of infrastructure for any burgeoning nation. Lil’ Brickie’s New Zealand embassy hid a starry-eyed version of the quarter-acre dream in a secret base below Pukekawa — showing the hard-fought peace between New Zealand and Ākarana might be a sham. The intricacies of geopolitics abound even a century into the future! The judging panel proved themselves rather susceptible to this state-sponsored propaganda, awarding the team with a highly commended.

Winners left the 24 Hour Awards ‘24 (held at Mt Eden’s The Bridgman) with bragging rights (another notch in the LinkedIn bedpost?), gift cards for Lamp Light Books and Gordon Harris, oodles of Resene merch (hubristic piles of M&M, powerbanks, and chargers galore), and trophies conceived, designed, and fabricated by SANNZ UoA’s own Evana Chan. Hopefully, all competitors left with a newfound network and plans to book tickets to Pōneke next July, as the 24 Hour Design Competition makes a jubilant and much-awaited return to the capital.

The 24hr competition is SANNZ’s largest calendar event and it comes back bigger and better every year. This year’s competition was our 11th, however, as the first collectively hosted and organised by all three Tāmaki schools of architecture, this year’s event was somewhat inaugural.

Thank you to the judging panel:

• Julie Stout: 2021 NZIA Gold Medal Recipient and Distinguished Fellow, Professional Teaching Fellow at Te Pare School of Architecture and Planning, Waipapa Taumata Rau (The University of Auckland), Mitchell Stout Dodd Architects + Urbanists
• Bobby Shen: Puketāpapa Local Board member and Business Development Manager - Existing Buildings at New Zealand Green Building Council
• Harry Platt: Director at NZIA Emerge and Architectural Graduate at Chow:Hill

Congratulations to this year’s winning teams:

• 3rd place – DJ XI: Brendon Linyin Cai (AUT), Grace Li (UoA), Angelica Morton (UoA), Jun Park (AUT), Liam Wright (UoA)
• 2nd place – GR8 Architects: Asiah (Unitec), Rahul Garad (Unitec), Lucy Ma (UoA), Humi Suhaimi (Unitec), Yona Zhou (Unitec)
• 1st place – JEAA: Matthew Brown (Unitec), Anand Dhillo (Unitec), Erica Lim (Unitec), Jerry Liu (UoA), Anthony Shen (UoA)

The 2024 sponsors of the SANNZ 24 Hour Design Competition are Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects, Resene, Sika Group New Zealand, Sheets by Salas, GIB and Gordon Harris.

The competition (and SANNZ) is organised by students, for students, as the student outreach of Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects. For more information on this year’s competition and the SANNZ kaupapa (or to get involved), visit sannz.org.