Date: Tuesday, 28 July 2026
Time: 18:00 – 19:00 SAST
Venue: Online on MS Teams – https://tinyurl.com/GSAPracLec-Mphethi
RSVP: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/GBW2BLDvDb
CPD Points: CAT 1, 0.1 CPD Credits
In 2026, the GSA is inviting architectural and spatial practitioners to speak to our community about how they are transforming their practice ground, through recombination, collaboration, refusal or making anew. Rather than the customary presentation of completed buildings, this lecture series foregrounds adaptive practice models – contingent, responsive, and continuously redefined.
Each Practice Lecture offers a practitioner the opportunity to reflect together with the community on the constitution of their practice, and how its organisation, evolution, fluidity, collaboration, systems and networks form a Practice Ground – a way of conducting and sustaining spatial production. As part of our practice ground, these sessions are always online, in the evenings, to ensure the widest possible participation in this collective reimagination of architectural doing.
MMA Design Studio was founded by then lecturer Mphethi Morojele as MMA Architects in 1995 just after the dawn of democracy. Since then, the mid-sized practice has been involved in transforming and re-defining the South African and African architectural and urban landscape through various award- winning iconic and ground-breaking projects.
The practice was formed as a critical and situated practice, treating architecture as a tool for social critique and empowerment through questioning the then dominant cultural economic and political norms.
This approach has necessitated an inter-disciplinary approach to architecture combining architecture, urban design, sociology, philosophy and art to expand the field’s research. The practice has also always maintained links with the academy in an attempt to blur the lines between design, teaching writing and activism. The practice continues to provide an enabling environment for young architects especially from disadvantaged backgrounds in an effort to transform the architectural landscape.
Research interests include learning from indigenous spatial practices and emerging and residual local cultural practices linking creative practice to place.
The practice employs a strong conceptual approach to architecture based on an understanding and interpretation of often difficult socio-cultural, economic and ecological contexts.