AVELA MAGQASHELA
Avela has over 10 years of experience in the architectural profession, in a variety of scales and South African contexts. He began his education in Cape Town, graduating with a B Tech Architecture in 2009 before 2 years later graduating with his B Tech Honours Project Management, both from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Avela later completed his Bachelor of Architecture Honours and then Masters degrees in Bloemfontein at the University of the Free State in 2015. Since graduating, Avela has further worked in Cape Town, and Johannesburg, where he co-founded Collective Studio Africa with Benjamin in 2015.
Avela has worked on a variety of projects including private residential, industrial, commercial and public buildings - completing the City of Joburg, Council Chambers in 2016 with Studio MAS. The relationship between scales across our built environment - from the city block to the door handle - fascinates Avela as he focuses his practice around the general tangibility of his design decisions.10 years of experience, spent full-time in the Architectural Profession, mainly focused on conceptual design, council submission, 3D presentations, graphics, marketing packages, and detail/design development. Avela won the Western Cape Caesarstone House competition in CPUT,2009.
BENJAMIN KOLLENBERG
Benjamin co-founded Collective Studio Africa in 2015 alongside Avela to promulgate their collective design vision. While working part-time for Collective SA, he went on to graduate Honours in Architecture, cum laude in 2017, and thereafter his Masters in Architecture cum laude in 2018, both from the University of Witwatersrand. Benjamin received multiple awards for his thesis titled “Capital Capitol”, including the SACAP award for the best architectural student over the full course of studies - 2012-2018. In his 5 years of experience as a design architect.
Benjamin has predominantly focussed his practice on art galleries, museums, schools, and accessible housing solutions. Benjamin believes in architectural thinking to provide broader social, economic, and environmental solutions where the collective whole can be greater than the sum of the focused parts.