Superstudio was a architecture enterprise that was founded in 1966 by a group of young extremist architectures in Florence, Italy. Superstudios drawing techniques relate to their ideas about architecture and the city. Their form of architecture is the continuous movement which was emerging at the time. With their techniques, they also tried to influence people to try and understand the movement they were going for which involved 'the order on earth'. Superstudio use a grid in some of their architectural images as they describe the grid to be a 'symbol of fabrication'. They say their structure they use in the images looks artificial as it 'holds its own determinacy and potentiality.

 

The technique that Superstudio use in their architectural images is to be drawing of the city as an anonymous megastructure. Superstudio have their images drawn from a view that exposes a lot of space in the image to create the megastructure effect. 

The drawing technique of drawing the city as an anonymous megastructure constructs a particular view or idea of how we understand the city through letting us see the city as a whole as it is a megastructure. If the the technique didn't involve a megastructure, then we wouldn't get a good idea of how they're portraying the city, as it would be a small section of it. 

Superstudio lets us understand the city as if it is a never ending image of buildings. With the grid included and the cities pop in and out of the grid, it looks as if the grid is apart of the city and is an abstract way to view it. 

With the production of the images, which were apart of the 'Continuous Movement', they have shown the images to let us understand how the city's are adjusting as Sacconi states, it is 'just another way to represent urbanization' (Sacconi 2003). As Sacconi has said this, he backs up that the city has been portrayed as going through a transition, as Superstudio have captured popular cities to edit, and show how the city is getting more popular and there is now more people migrating and adapting to the city. With the big white grids in the images, that are blank and are put on top of the buildings, it is like Superstudio are telling us that cities are empty and that those spaces will be filled due to urbanisation as Sacconi stated before. 

Superstudio's images are produced so the environment in the image is designed to be satisfying to humans to fulfilled their as Sacconi stated (2003) 'biological, social and psychological aspects.' This is extremely vital as the images are trying to make us like them. This is very interesting as Superstudio now allows 'for meticulous experimentation, progressive refinement and control of the physical and psychological effects of different spatial conditions on users.' This helped Superstudio critique their final images and make them as pleasant as possible.          

'SUPERSTUDIO requires additional levels of reading, precisely because there are degrees of deception constantly present in their elaborately assembled images and projects.' This quote, stated by Lang (2003) describes how Superstudio has made these images to be different, as when we look at them we are supposed to have a harder look and really appreciate what features are shown in the image as there is a degree of deception in the images. For the cities this lets us have a deeper and more meaningful review of the image as we look very closely to what buildings are standing out in the image and what buildings are covered. 

Superstudio's idea of how we understand the city again, is through their technique of drawing the city as an anonymous megastructure. They have done this all through showing the images in an abstract way, also having them represent urbanisation as we see the city differently. Also they're fulfilling human aspects so that when we view the city through Superstudio we like what we're seeing. They have also gone deep into producing these images so that there is a degree of deception and that we would appreciate these images much more. 

With my own take on trying to recreate Superstudio's architecture, I had many experimentations with different types of ways to complete this task. 

Firstly I had attempted to try and draw the grid that Superstudio use in their images but because our final drawing had to be 80cm x 80cm I thought it would be too hard. I also wasn't very good at drawing at the time. But in class we drew perspective drawings which I liked a lot and wanted to see if I could incorporate them into my drawing.

Secondly I had tried to create seperate shapes on a website called 'OnShape' which is a free to use CAD program which has many benefits. I had tried to create the UTS building and place it on a background with an outdoor environment, but when using Adobe Photoshop to edit the shape it would be very hard. I also tried to create shapes on Photoshop on a background of the city but it was very difficult for the shape to come out looking good. 

In class my teacher had shown me the grid tool in Adobe Illustrator and had shown me how to create a rectangle with the perspective view on it so you could see the city through the technique of looking at it as a megastructure while having the rectangle pan back to look like a big city. I had tried this and it had seemed to work, so I decided to use a photo from the internet of the city of Sydney. I had created my rectangle on Illustrator and pasted it into Photoshop with the photo of the city. I then had cut out the rectangle on Photoshop and then had placed a grid on top, which I had also made in Illustrator of the rectangle to give it a 3D effect. 

Final Drawing

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