From South Africa to South Florida, for Margi Glavovic Nothard, Founder and Design Director of Glavovic Studio, social impact means everything. Here, Margi shares why.
What is the “why”? I often ask myself that question before accepting and while executing various projects. At Glavovic Studio, we are dedicated to improving quality of life through resilient and socially conscious art, architecture, and urban design.
Over the past 20 years, Glavovic Studio has designed more than 100 projects, and helping solve pressing problems like housing affordability is our top priority. Although aesthetic beauty certainly matters, functional beauty is truly life-changing. That is our “why”: Social impact on a community level.
My “why” can be traced back to my upbringing in Africa, and I am truly grateful for it. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe and growing up in Durban, South Africa, I always felt as one with my community and the nature surrounding us. I grew up overlooking a river and “krantz”—part of a nature reserve—and spent childhoods hiking in the Drakensberg mountains, walking through coastal wetlands, or swimming in beautiful South African waters. Our family life was oriented towards developing an appreciation of nature, learning and loving its beauty and fragility.
I was very fortunate to grow up in a house that my parents commissioned and was designed to connect with nature. The house—designed by architect Victor Polfreman (with my parents’ detailed input)—was beautiful with its rusticated white brick walls, quarry tile floors, wood rafters, and sliding louvre doors. It opened over the Palmiet River and celebrated a connection to the environment through architecture.
Not surprisingly, I elected to study architecture at KwaZulu-Natal, School of Architecture in a traditional program whose mantra is to generate architecture that enables society’s full potential. In my fourth year, I applied for a Master of Architecture program in the United States, SCI-Arc in Southern California, which teaches architects to engage, speculate, and innovate—taking the lead in reimagining the limits of architecture.
And so, I headed to America to fulfil the American Dream and my own. This education was quite formative in providing the confidence and overarching mission for a future “Glavovic Studio” later in 1999, when my husband and I moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Built on top of my upbringing, KZN was a firm foundation, while SCIArc expanded my understanding of architecture’s role in society and developed skills for success in the business world.
By the late 1990s, I had everything needed to start Glavovic Studio alongside architect Terence O’Connor and formulate a focus for our practice. This meant understanding South Florida—its strengths, its weaknesses, and general community sentiment—so that we may impact it positively. Early on, I began to see a delicate balance between the natural habitat and the built as a space of ongoing compromise and never-ending negotiation. I also started to understand the challenges of affordable housing: As early as 2007, Glavovic Studio began exploring housing as a public good, completing the Dr. Kennedy Homes affordable housing development with the City of Fort Lauderdale Housing Authority.
The rest is history. Decades and dozens of projects later, my team is still trying to positively impact the local community—whether it’s Miami-Dade County, Southern California, or anywhere else. The “why” is still there in large part because I am continually inspired and influenced by the landscape and nature that permeated my youth.
From South Africa to South Florida, social impact means everything. There is no greater inspiration than the impact we leave on the world around us.
