Local Studio

South Africa

‘Our studio is a quintessentially Joburg outfit: fast-paced, entrepreneurial and imperfect,’ says Local Studio’s founder Thomas Chapman, who set up the firm in 2012 and now runs it together with Samantha Trask, Daniel Trollip, Shawn Constant, Khensani de Klerk and Njabulo Phekani. Although just 12-strong, the small practice has built more than 40 projects in the past nine years. Its experimental approach allows it to design anything from community centres to schools and homes, including Cotswolds Cubes (pictured), a low, elegantly minimalist, red and black brick home in the Joburg suburb of Saxonwold. ‘Design should be a reactive rather than a prescriptive process,’ says Chapman. ‘This way, it becomes a co-production, with unlikely collaborators. Buildings conceived in this spirit can become rich archives of a time and place. Another idea we are driven by is the promise of “soft-power” in architecture. We are deeply aware of our post-apartheid political context, and we believe in the subtle power of a crafted public interface to transform physical and social context.’