Local Studio is a Johannesburg-based architecture practice, founded by Thomas Chapman in 2012. We currently employ 13 people, of which 11 are architects or technologists. We are a quintessentially-‘Joburg’ product: fast-paced, entrepreneurial and imperfect. We believe that architecture in the digital age can only really be referred to as ‘local’ if built. Since our inception in 2012, our priority has thus been to build as much as possible. This means that we are highly experimental and not afraid to make mistakes. We are driven by two core ideas, the first is that design should be a reactive rather than prescriptive process. By approaching form-making, materiality and tectonics in this way, design becomes a process of co-production, with unlikely collaborators. Another idea we are driven by is the promise of ‘soft-power’ in architecture. We are deeply aware of our post-apartheid political context, but are less interested in solutionist, program-driven responses to the numerous problems faced in a country like South Africa. Instead, we believe in the subtle power of a crafted public interface to transform physical and social contexts. For this reason we are program-agnostic but drawn to any architectural project that has a direct interface with public space.