You could say Carla’s blood runs purple, a jacaranda shade of purple, just like the city she calls home.

Carla was project co-ordinator behind the first ever Cool Capital Guerrilla Biennale in Pretoria that was held in Spring last year. The two and a half month long project was about using the arts and community projects to shift relationships people have with the city, its heritage, its history and its evolving narrative.

‘Pretoria can be about bureaucracy, paper work and waiting for approval or permission, so the idea of a guerrilla biennale was about putting it out to the public to come up with ideas and projects … and getting them to get out there to do it themselves. It was very citizen-driven,’ says Carla.

One of the projects was to wrap the statue of Paul Kruger on Church Square in tin foil, which spoke to statements made through sculpture that are so dominant in Pretoria. In addition, ten donated public benches were transformed into functional public art for the capital city.

Carla is a candidate architect and received her master’s degree in architecture from UP last year. Her current employer, Pieter Mathews of Mathews and Associates Architects, was the convenor of the ground-breaking biennale.

Carla is co-founder of the Molo Mollo outdoor cinema club and was convenor of the Architecture Theory Summer School series that featured Dr Jean-Pierre de la Porte, writer and philosopher. Last year she was a member of the NRF research team on resilient cities that collaborated with the University of Melbourne.

Working on a project like Cool Capital so soon after graduating was a dream come true for Carla and the perfect platform to unleash her excitement and enthusiasm for the opportunities in a re-imaged capital city.

‘I was born in Pretoria, went to school here, went to university here and I live here, so I have many happy memories linked to Pretoria. There are beautiful pockets of space and architecture in Pretoria. I love the Staatsmuseum and the old fire station,’ she says.

Pretoria is alive with a thriving subculture, what Carla refers to as a creative underground, that’s beginning to bubble over into the mainstream. Being at the heart of it is perfect for her right now.