Watch Local Studio founder Thomas Chapman explain social change and clever architecture in Johannesburg.
"We're lucky to be a poorly planned and ugly city that welcomes change," says Thomas Chapman. The founder of Local Studio has chosen Johannesburg, South Africa, as his canvas, trading in the brown hues of "spatial injustice" for impactful cultural spaces fitting of the unique people who call the city home.
Since 2012, Chapman has steered Local Studio toward new directions for African architecture through innovations in community participation, public space design, and alternative construction methodologies.
"We're not really interested in projects where there's no social impact," says Chapman.
The studio has its hands in a number of projects in Johannesburg, such as the design of a pedestrian bridge in Westbury, an affordable housing tower in Braamfontein, and a new cultural hub in Sophiatown called the Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre.
The Centre is home to one of Chapman's most recent projects, the Sophiatown Remembrance Screen. Described as an exploration of the relationship between memory and architecture, the screen is a place for the displaced former residents of Sophiatown to memorialize their former homes.
Around 65,000 residents were forcibly removed from the area by the Apartheid regime. Today, the culture, tradition, and sense of community created by the people who lived there is slowly being restored.
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Watch Local Studio founder Thomas Chapman explain social change and clever architecture in Johannesburg.