HUT Design Challenge: “The Muizenbar” by Inland X Stripped Collective

INTERVIEWED BY Steve Smith PHOTOS Jan Ras

Outlining the creative journey behind their unique design, Inland’s Brett Rubin and Io Makandal, together with Kylie Simon of Stripped Collective share insights into “The Muizenbar” created for the HUT X Always Welcome Design Challenge.

Launched at Cape Town Furniture Week 2024, the HUT x Always Welcome Design Challenge invited seven innovative designers to create limited-edition pieces using material reclaimed from the iconic Muizenberg Huts, which were undergoing refurbishment.

We chatted with Brett Rubin and Io Makandal of Inland, and Kylie Simon of Stripped Collective to dive deeper into the inspiration, design processes, and challenges they faced while working on this exciting project.

What was the inspiration for your piece? And were there any aspects of the beach huts that inspired your design? 

Our inspiration for the HUT was in fact the form, structural lines and tones of the original beach huts themselves. Working together with Simon and Khyle from Stripped Collective, who brought a wealth of knowledge and care to the restoration and reconstruction  of the wooden panels, we wanted to create a piece that would pay homage to these iconic symbols of nostalgic glamour.   

How would you describe your personal design aesthetic … and how have you incorporated that with the bold colours and history of the Muizenberg beach huts into this piece of furniture? 

Stripped aims to craft furniture through curated experiences. Working across a diverse range, from furniture manufacture, interior design, shop-fittings, home fittings, and industrial design, they always strive to create without boundaries or restrictions. With over a decade of experience in restoration and manufacture, they brought the perfect measure of skill, care and sensibility to working with Inland on the Hut project. 

Inland is a company that constantly seeks to adapt traditional glass processes and techniques and fuse them with a forward-thinking design approach. 

In this instance of working with the wood from the Muizenberg beach huts, we wanted to bring our own sense of flair and sustainable design thought into the glass components of the drinks cabinet. 

Do you feel you have preserved the story and character of the Muizenberg beach huts in your piece, while also ensuring the design remains sustainable and functional? If so, how? 

We do, as we have tried to recreate a drinks cabinet in the form of one of the Muizenberg Beach Huts. We have made sure to limit waste on the wood planks and preserve as much of the beautiful texture and detail in the panels as possible. 

The wood was stripped and treated to ensure longevity, with particular focus given to strong joinery to ensure the structural integrity of the cabinet. Every working surface of the wood has been oiled and treated for use but the exterior preserves the original paint from the beach huts. The steel for the hinges and latches and the door panelling is made from mild steel which is a sustainable material and can be recycled infinitely and used forever. 

Inland’s inventive approach to the glass elements of the drinks cabinet was also one grounded in sustainability – in particular through the idea to make drinking tumblers and inner panels of the cabinet that both feature the repurposing of sea glass found on Muizenberg and its surrounding beaches in their design. 

Walk us through your design process when working with reclaimed materials, particularly those as unique and iconic as the wood from the huts? 

Stripped Collective has utilised its extensive knowledge and experience of wood restoration to preserve and enhance the original wood and its grooves, paint and detailing. The offcuts of panels were turned into a wine rack at the top of the cabinet. They have kept the structural moulds of the timber to create texture in the wine rack and on the exterior cladding. 

From a glass point of view, Inland has endeavoured to make sure our contribution is environmentally aware and sustainable in such a way that the glass used is purposeful and considered in equal measure to the wood. 

Io Makandal (who is one-half of Inland) is also an artist whose practice is deeply steeped in (and informed by) environmental and ecological thought and awareness.

It was Io’s idea to find and work with sea glass on Muizenburg and its surrounding beaches. We managed to find an extremely generous contact in Cape Town who is a collector of sea glass. When Brett explained the idea to her, she happily collected sea glass for us to use and brought it up to us when she came for a business trip to JHB. We managed to acquire almost 3 kg of sea glass collected from Cape Town beaches to work with on the Muizenbar cabinet. These shards of sea glass were then melted down and hand-blown into the tumbler drinking glasses that we made especially for the Hut cabinet. 

The remainder of the sea glass fragments were then fused and slumped in a kiln into float glass panels that feature inside the Muizenbar cabinet. 

Both of these were extremely challenging undertakings, but for Inland, it was crucial to challenge ourselves to find an approach that wasn’t just decorative but instead would offer a contribution that would find the common language of sustainable design with the wood. When we received the wooden panels we marvelled at how the natural elements had weathered the paint on the wood over the years and there was a similar feeling when we received the sea glass and held it in our hands. The fragments (mostly from alcohol bottles) had been smoothed out and ‘sandblasted’ by the ocean – a natural process of time and the elements having their effect on the glass. When removing the glass panels with the sea glass fragments inset from the kiln we couldn’t help but admire how these discarded fragments of waste had been so beautifully repurposed into something close to ‘gemstone glass terrazzo’. While encasing and enshrining a bigger story in their form. 

What challenges did you anticipate when working with these specific materials, and how did you overcome them? 

We definitely expected the challenge of some of the wood being rotten and deteriorated. How we dealt with that was stripping the wood back as far as necessary to the core which was still in sound condition. We machined the wood until we had what we needed and the sizes needed. We worked with as wide a plank as possible to avoid wastage and limit offcuts to as little as possible.  

What emotions or memories do you hope your piece will evoke in someone familiar with the huts? 

We all have our own individual childhood memories of time spent on the Muizenberg beach playing in the sand and surf below the huts, on long summer holidays and how much this project appeals to us all from that nostalgic standpoint. 

We hope the detail and care put into making the cabinet will equally capture the imagination of the viewer who has their own emotions and memories associated with the beach huts and will see the appeal of having a cabinet in the form and shape of a Muizenberg beach hut in their space. 

For me (Brett) in particular this was a sentimental project as I had an aunt and uncle (Benny and Sylvia Goldberg) who owned a famous bottle store and retired to Muizenberg where they had a beach hut and many childhood holidays were spent on the beach running into the hut to get out of the gale force afternoon winds after a full day of childhood revelry on the beach. 

I still remember the welcoming feeling of sitting inside the Hut and changing out of wet swimming trunks or eating lunch in the calm sanctuary of the austere beach hut with the smell of the wood. Even at that young age, I remember feeling so fortunate to be able to be sitting inside of the  hut. 

Visit the Exhibition

All the pieces from the HUT x Always Welcome Design Challenge are currently on display at Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral for several months and will be accessible to holiday goers, locals, press and creative communities alike.

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