Designers We Love: Dokter and Misses

INTERVIEWED BY Lindi Brownell Meiring

With Dokter and Misses speaking at the Design Indaba Conference, we thought it was about time that we catch up with the duo behind the ever-popular studio.

Here, husband-and-wife team Katy Taplin and Adriaan Hugo, share their thoughts about design, collaboration and stand-out moments.

It’s a big year for Dokter and Misses, celebrating your 10th year as one of South Africa’s best loved design studios. Will you be launching anything special in 2017?

We’ve been working on a new design-centric development in Braamfontein, which will house our new showroom and it seems fitting that this would be the year that we make this move. Braamfontein has been an important part of our story over the years and we want to create spaces where other local designers can join us in establishing themselves.

You’ve done collaborations in the past with the likes of Gone Rural and Ronel Jordaan. Which local designer/s would you most like to collaborate with next, and why?

The Ninevites and Missibaba – for their flair for all things colour and graphic.

What three things do you think are most important when it comes to collaboration in design?

Shared goals, shared drive and complementary skills.

In 2014, you worked with architect Clara da Cruz Almeida on the prefabricated nano-home, POD-iDLADLA, a VISI favourite that appeared on our Aug/Sep 2015 cover. What did you enjoy most about this project?

It’s always been a dream of ours to build a tiny house and it was interesting to explore the crossover between architecture and product design – this project really blurred those boundaries. We learned a lot from the project and enjoyed how immersive the design process became, as we had to question traditional use of domestic space in order to design multi-functional products that were also going to be easy to to use.

You’ve won awards and exhibited both locally and internationally at top galleries and design fairs, from New York and London to Miami and Basel. Is there a moment in your careers that stands out for you?

It’s always been tough to top the opening of our first, very small, shop at 44 Stanley Avenue 10 years ago, but the Kassena Horseman being included in Beauty – Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial in New York would be a close second.

Browse our gallery above to view a selection of both current products and limited edition Dokter and Misses designs. You can shop online at dokterandmisses.com.