Cavendish Square has collaborated with local designers to make bespoke recycled products to be sold exclusively at this quirky pop-up shop. 

If you’ve been shopping in Cavendish Square in Cape Town lately, you may have noticed four open-mouthed monsters scattered around the mall. These cute little guys are there to help encourage recycling in conjunction with the World Design Capital 2014 theme “Today For Tomorrow”.

Top SA designers such as Katherine Pichulik, WREN, Give It Bag and NEWCO, have transformed the waste collected from these recycling bins into trendy, eco-conscious upcycled items to be sold at the new Made By You & Cavendish Square Recycle Pop Up Store.

The shop will be open for the month of October 2014 at the Col’Cacchio court on the Lower Ground Floor from 10am – 5pm daily.

For more information, visit cavendish.co.za

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Department of Design is an exciting three-week long programme initiated by the government of the Netherlands as part of their contribution to World Design Capital 2014. 

Running from the 8^th until the 26^th of July at Cape Town’s Provenance Auction House, the programme represents a R4.5 million investment, and promises to bring over 60 Dutch companies together with their South African counterparts through workshops, debates, and other activities that address our country’s sustainability challenges.

This will see the auction house transformed into a pavilion by award-winning Dutch design firm, Droog, for the duration of the event. “Their work is thought provoking, and it breaks the mould of traditional design, which is a natural fit for us,” says Laura Owings, Department of Design’s communications manager. “We want it to be a space that inspires creative thinking, something that people can experience even without attending the events.”

The event itself is free, and visitors are invited to attend activities free of charge. There will also be a pop-up café, Wi-Fi and a play-space with educational toys designed by the various partners involved.

Droog’s core concept for the pavilion design is to use things that are already available in the city whilst constantly engaging with local artisans, combining their knowledge with Dutch creativity in order to contribute to the final design. 

“Research shows that in the townships of Cape Town everything is re-used and finds new meaning. Nothing disappears from the flow,” Laura explains. “The Department of Design will be created with local materials gathered in various parts of Cape Town and built by local parties.”

One of the local organisations involved is Carpenter’s Shop, a Cape Town initiative that gives practical training and work-place skills in carpentry. Their carpentry team will be creating DoD’s tables and stools based on designs from Droog. After the event DoD will help facilitate the sale of these items, with all proceeds going back to Carpenter’s Shop.

Charl Edwards from Yenza, a non-profit organisation that sources local items that showcase the ingenuity, creativity and everyday design of resourceful people in resource-scarce areas, has been part of the information exchange with the team from Droog.

“So far I’ve been impressed with the way they have managed to incorporate a lot of the visual imagery that we have shared with them into the design. It was also interesting to see the speed at which the project came together,” says Charl.

As South Africa’s third largest European Union trading partner, the Netherlands is constantly seeking ways to build a sustainable relationship with South Africa. To this end, the Dutch Consul General is inviting all South Africans to get involved in the programme through their #COCREATESA campaign. They are inviting South Africans to take a selfie, use the abovementioned hashtag and make a suggestion as to how they can ‘co-create SA’ instead of presenting Dutch solutions to local challenges. The selfies can be uploaded to their Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts.

8-26 July
Provenance Auction House
6-8 Vrede Street, Garden Street, Cape Town
www.departmentofdesign.nl

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Wow. It’s July, which means we’re already halfway through Cape Town’s tenure as World Design Capital. The time is just flying by, but thankfully Liani van der Westhuizen has been taking visual notes on a daily basis.

‘Calendar of the Everyday’ is a visual celebration of the ordinary in an extraordinary city. The project records and shares the everyday experiences of urban life in the Mother City’s reign as World Design Capital, day by day, for a full calendar year in 2014. 

“Being in a city feels a certain way. Each city has its own morphology, identity and character,” Liani explains. “Google images of Cape Town, and you will have to scroll through endless images of Table Mountain, beaches and the ocean before encountering any images of the Mother City at street level. A city’s character is made of more than its physical features and infrastructure. It is the intangible qualities of city life that makes it distinctive – the manifestation of a particular living culture, host to the ‘flow’ of city life, embracing its rhythms, contours, personal histories, eccentricities and contradictions.”

‘Calendar of the Everyday’ depicts this distinctive flow of Cape Town city life, and in the process helps shape its urban identity –  beyond tourist traps and well-known natural beauty. Through sharing these daily photos, Liani hopes to build up a visual essay evoking a powerful sense of place; a sense of the Cape Town as we know it.

Officially recognised World Design Capital Cape Town 2014 project WDC558.

Follow these links for a daily update:

http://www.calendareveryday.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/calendareveryday
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/calendareveryday
Twitter: @LianiWest

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In the Greenovation edition of VISI, we featured four low-cost housing solutions, including the Light House that impressed us so much we went around for a visit that resulted in a thought-provoking conversation about how co-design can help shift the traditional role of saviour and victim in the rollout of housing. 

Xoma Ayob has been living on a piece of land perched above the Hout Bay harbour in Hangberg for more than 30 years.

Here he not only built himself a house but also a livelihood: he tends a menagerie of livestock and birds, and grows both vegetables for the food and medicinal herbs that he sells. He also grows indigenous trees from seed and plants them in the area.

In 2013 the City of Cape Town approached him and his neighbours to move them to a Temporary Relocation Area (TRA) in order for a housing development to happen on the land that they were living on. Most of Xoma’s neighbours opted for the “dark tin boxes” as he calls them.

“I have been comfortable here,” says Xoma. “It was not easy for me to leave this area after everything that I have done. I am surrounded by stuff that I have been keeping myself busy with, that helps me to prosper. So I resisted.”

For Xoma a TRA house was simply not a viable option. He did not see the sense in giving up his home and the garden and livestock that sustained him, nor the view that he has relished for more than three decades to be relocated to a “camp” of generic boxes. He refused to move and became a stumbling block to the development and thorn in the side of the City of Cape Town.

His refusal to move from the land that he had been occupying for the past 30 years inadvertently set in motion a co-design process that resulted in a moving case study of what can happen when design becomes a dialogue between equals. 

In an attempt to sweeten the deal for Xoma a city representative contacted Stephen Lamb and Andrew Lord, who have been long-time advocates for fire- and flood-proofing temporary houses in informal settlements and creating food security through vertical gardening to create one of his signature green walls for Xoma’s TRA house. 

Instead of taking a brief from the city, Stephen and Andrew approached the situation more as an active listener than a service provider.  

“When I met Xoma for the first time I told him what I was being asked to do and I also told him that I did not have an agenda. I asked him to tell me his side of the story and we got to talking,” Stephen recalls.   

“When I first met Stephen he told me that he was here to listen to my needs and that made me feel like I could work with him. Because he wasn’t going to tell me that I should lay here, sit here and do this, this way or that, that way. He came to listen to me,” Xoma recalls. 

After a week of conversation they had an idea and went back to the city with the request that the city should give them a new site and the same amount of money that they would have spent on the TRA house and let Xoma design something that he did want to move into.

“This is where it becomes really interesting – how can design change our notion of poverty or how we interpret poverty and how can it help in our approach to breaking the cycles of poverty and misery?” ponders Stephen.

The city agreed and gave Xoma a new site and the TRA budget of R50 000. Xoma, assisted by Stephen and Andrew, designed a double storey house that incorporated the principles of flood and fireproofing as well as a green wall on the one side. The plan includes an open-plan living space, toilet and shower and mezzanine bedroom. The structure is built on gum pole stilts and pre-manufactured panels made up of corrugated iron, insulation and interior cladding were produced off-site and assembled onsite.   

When they presented the design to the city, the city insisted that it should also be compliant to the national building regulations and the design was put through a rigorous approvals progress that checked structural and public safety as well as lighting and ventilation, drainage and fire protection and energy efficiency.

“What actually happened was he gave the city something that blows them away – he was suppose to take a number and stand in line to get what he is given,” Stephen points out. “Instead now you have something that is co-designed, that is compliant to regulations, that looks beautiful, that is sensitive politically and socially, that is not just a product but a celebration of a process. This is what can happen when design is a dialogue of equals not a competition between privileged, professionals.”

Stephen wholeheartedly believes that human-centred design can actively subvert the stereotypical roles of victim and saviour by putting the role of saviour squarely in the hands of the victim. So instead of government, people are able to do it for themselves that could result in real broad change.  

The design is purposefully simple to assemble onsite. The foundation footings and columns are prepared on site while the wall and roof panels are built in a workshop. Once the foundation and panels are ready, it is assembled. The idea is that beneficiary communities can be employed by government to build their own structure.

“So it is not just about building houses it is about building people too,” says Stephen. 

With the help of a community of people that rallied behind the project, the house went up in just three days. 

Xoma decided to make the plans for his fully compliant “Light House” open source so that anyone could have access to them.

“I designed this so that anyone can have a copy. I want the government to take these cottages and build these for the ‘mense’. It is eco-friendly and it is flood and fire resistant. This design of ours is for everyone. When you live in a place like this, you feel like you can now help the next person,” Xoma concludes.  

Read our article about Stephen Lamb and Andrew Lord’s edible shack here.

touchingtheearthlightly.com

Touching the Earth Lightly would like to give a specials thanks to all those who assisted in the project development and building of the Light House, in their various ways and capacities (in no specific order or preference) below: Lindsay Bush, Conrad Hicks, Helen Abrahams, Fiona Jonkers, Ian Upton, Belinda Taal, Bruce Snaddon, Katrin Hensel, Anja Letchle, Geraint Piercey, Craig Pickard, Francois De Flamingh, Wally Peterson, The Pole Yard, Andy Jones, Jonah De Lange, Giles Ridley, James Dee, Chief !Xam Korana, !Xoma Ayob, Jo-Jo tanks, Reliance Composting, Cape Town Partnership, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), City of Cape Town, Sculpt the Future Foundation, Kommetjie Environmental Action Group, Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC), Informal Settlement Network (ISN)

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In time for World Environment Day on 5 June, as well as being an official World Design Capital 2014 project, Kirstenbosch’s highly anticipated “Boomslang” walkway has opened and, well… Just go!

The Kirstenbosch Garden’s brand new 130m-long tree canopy walkway – nicknamed Boomslang – will take your breath away. And not just because it winds all through the leafy branches of ancient trees in the arboretum, but because the views of the mountain and forest are truly spectacular from here.

We also especially love that it bears the touch of a fine artist. It’s true. It took award-winning Cape Town painter Ian Grose to mix a green palette, combining all the shades he saw around the arboretum and then perfectly match the green of the galvanised steel construction with the forest. This way the walkway will not be obtrusive but blend in beautifully with its natural surroundings. And boy, did Ian get it right.

But, let’s go back to the beginning. Designed by architects Mark Thomas and Christopher Bisset, and celebrating Kirstenbosch Garden’s centenary in conjunction with the WDC2014, the crescent-shaped walkway was financed purely by money left to the Gardens by donors, especially one Mary Mullins.

Like they say about all good things, it took a while. Planning started back in 2012 and only a year later did time come for on-site construction. Fitting all the walkway’s parts together was also time-consuming as things like carpentry and painting had to be negotiated around trees that are between 100 and 150 years old, high above ground level.

Then there was a small crane thrown in the mix of all this, moving it around the forest floor proved quite a challenge. It was used to hoist up all the components to be bolted together on supporting columns.

Crafting the handrails, made of Padauk, a West African sustainable hardwood, also got complicated and had to eventually be laminated together in various places to match the curve of the bridge.

It was worth the wait, however. Kirstenbosch Garden’s newest walkway, in all its architectural magnificence, looks like it has been part of the forest forever.

sanbi.org/gardens/kirstenbosch/tree-canopy-walkway

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Win one of five double tickets to the special edition of Kamers at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town from 5 to 8 June 2014.

Sharing a passion for showcasing and developing local talent and design, Kamers has partnered with the Cape Craft and Design Institute, and put together yet another visual feast filled with creativity, entrepreneurship, music, food and fresh talent. Some 110 design exhibitors have been confirmed and, being that the Castle of Good Hope is the original port of trade in the Cape, Kamers thought it appropriate to complete the circle of design during the World Design Capital 2014 by bringing trade back to this majestic historic site.
 
Look out for their mini magazine with a black, white and yellow WDC2014-inspired decor cover shoot listing the products and traders that will be exhibiting and selling their wares.
 
Besides supporting and developing products with creatives and young entrepreneurs, the KAMERS experience also aims to inspire and encourage visitors to explore their own creative potential and help foster the entrepreneurs of the future.

kamersvol.com 

To enter, simply share this post on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ or Linkedin – make sure to include “@VISI_mag @Kamersvol” in the post – and tell us you have in the comments below. Enter before midnight on Thursday 29 May 2014.

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The epic creative crowd-sourcing project that blew the Mother City away in 2009, 1 000 Drawings, is back and an official World Design Capital 2014 project. A series of public doodle sessions has been launched and, well, they want your doodles. Yes you read right. Before you roll your eyes and think “there go those Capetonians again, what’s next…” read on.

The idea started back in 2006 when Paballo ya Batho, a Johannesburg-based innercity soup kitchen’s truck was stolen, and they found themselves without a way to feed the hundreds of homeless people they fed daily. So “The Night of a 1 000 Drawings” was born as a rescue plan. People were invited to donate A5 drawings of anything, which were then sold for R100 to raise funds. By the end of that first evening, enough money had been raised for a new truck. These days the concept has grown beyond Johannesburg to Cape Town (in 2009) and also runs in Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam, Tuscany, Belgium, Dubai and Bloemfontein.

This year’s Night of a 1000 Drawings will be held in Cape Town on the 28 August at the Good Hope Centre and the proceeds will go towards the upgrading of the Thomas Wildschutt School in Retreat. Expect doodles, graffiti, sketches, paintings, and other conceptual and experimental works, all available for R100 each. Who knows, you might even pick up work by a famous – or soon-to-be-famous – artist.

Leading up to the event, in an effort to generate the artworks, several doodle sessions have been organised around the city, in venues such as co-working office Twenty Fifty (that we featured here) and on top of Table Mountain. They’re generally pretty social events with drinks, music and an all-round awesome vibe. The next session is at Field Office on Thursday 22 May, but if you want to get involved and can’t make it to the events there are several drop off points around Cape Town.

Says organiser Shani Judes: “It’s a great honour to be making this happen during 2014 and to be chosen as one of the World Design Capital projects. Our cause now has the platform it deserves to reach more countries around the world. 1000 Drawings is a very simple concept that can change lives and we hope to encourage everyone, young and old, individuals and companies in Cape Town and the rest of the country to send us their doodles and artworks.”

Keep posted on upcoming events by following them on Twitter @1000drawingsSA and liking the 1000 Drawings Cape Town page on Facebook, 1000drawingsct.co.za

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Tonight, Thursday 17 April from 5pm to 9pm, Warren Editions are breaking the mold with a “live print performance”. Working from a live webcam feed, artist Katherine Bull’s autographic drawings will be translated into print by a team of printmakers. We asked Sean O’Toole to give us the lowdown on the cutting-edge Warren Editions print studio.

In 2006, two years before she opened her Cape Town studio, Warren Editions, printmaker and entrepreneur Zhané Warren joined Facebook. There is a point to this seemingly random fact.

“I am not part of the Rorke’s Drift, Artist Proof Studio or Caversham Press generation at all,” says this mother of two, referring to the storied printmaking studios that preceded her. Far from disrespecting their efforts, she adds that they produced some of her favourite graphics. But Zhané, who did experimental performance work in the early 2000s before graduating as a master printer in Antwerp, opened up shop in the era of iPads and status updates.

“Most of my clients are under 45,” she says, challenging the view that art on paper is old-fashioned. “It is not just the people who can’t afford the R100 000 works, I have had people who can afford expensive paintings. It is not about work on paper versus painting for them, it is about the excitement of an image.”

Her collaboration with Swedish-born Cape Town painter Tom Cullberg is a case in point. In 2008, working with Warren Editions, he produced a winsome study of an A-frame tent in blue and pale yellow tones. People still phone Warren Editions to enquire if this sold-out work is available.

All counted, she has worked with over 30 artists, among them colourist painters Michael Taylor and Georgina Gratrix. Colour, something that Walter Battiss made central to his prints, has not always found favour with local artists. Zhané hopes to correct this drift. “I refuse to print in sepia,” she states.

For the World Design Capital 2014, Zhané is planning to work with Luc Tuymans, the Belgian painter and printmaker celebrated for his washed-out portrait studies. Luc will get to work on a custom-made piece of machinery dubbed the “red lady” by Zhané’s three studio assistants. Proving that print and online are not mutually exclusive, Zhané is currently using Google to see if this press, the largest in South Africa, might not in fact be the biggest in the southern hemisphere!

021 461 6070, warreneditions.com

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With us hosting the World Design Capital 2014, comes the first 100% Design preview at CT Decorex, a showcase of contemporary local and international furniture, lighting, interiors and textiles. A globally renowned brand, 100% Design officially launches in Joburg in August alongside Decorex. However in April, at Decorex Cape Town, there will be a “teaser”, as the show’s creative director Laurence Brick puts it. Here, Laurence, also founder of Loads of Living, talks local design and what we can look forward to at 100% Design SA.

In your experience, in what state is the market for local design?

South African design now holds its own internationally. We have a strong sense of our distinctive design aesthetic. Many of our designers are supplying international stores on an ongoing basis.

How will 100% Design help keep that going and provide new opportunities?

It is an international brand, so will bring more attention to South Africa and further position our designers as global players.

What are some of the names we can expect to see?

Established furniture designers such as Tonic, Bronze Age, Dokter and Misses, alongside new talent like Laurie Wiid and Wintec Innovation. Ceramics from master potters Martine Jackson, Anthony Shapiro and Nic Sithole, as well as relatively new names like Madoda Fani and Mervyn Gers. Not to mention surface design from Atang Tshikare. There will also be the 100 Beautiful South African Things exhibition.

A trend you’re loving?

3D-printing.

A trend you’re tired of?

Perfect formulaic interiors.

100percentdesign.co.za

25 to 28 April, Cape Town International Convention Centre, decorex.co.za

This article first appeared in our April/May 2014 REWIND REDO RENEW edition, now on shelves.

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Last week was the irrepressibly contagious Infecting The City Public Arts Festival, which turned Cape Town’s central streets into a stage. Photographer Sydelle Willow Smith shot this striking photo essay for us so that you can either fondly remember the highlights or, at least, taste what you missed.

In recent years public art has continued to expand beyond the familiar and more permanent examples like sculpture. Instead, is a wider more inclusive spirit of public art champions dance, theatre, performance art and, even, controversial intervention. All of which is, of course, taken out of traditional spaces, into spaces where the public can’t interact easily. 

Pioneering this progressive approach to public art for the past seven years now, is the Infecting The City Public Arts Festival that, from 10 to 15 March, gave Capetonians a taste of what life could be like if our city throbbed with daily public art events. The festival saw over 300 artists take over the city and present work in a variety of venues including street corners, sidewalks, squares, gallery steps, public gardens and museums. The real treat for is that all of this was free, gratis, mahala. With an evening and an afternoon programme, a step outside the office for lunch turned into surprise art shows for many.

Besides being an official World Design Capital 2014 project, this year’s festival was also made special by award-winning shows like Nelisiwe Xaba and Mocke J Van Veuren’s Uncles and Angels, which won the coveted FNB Art Prize in 2013, made it all the more special. Standard Bank Award winner for dance in 2011, Mamela Nyamza also presented a new work in collaboration with actress Faniswa Yisa, which they debuted last year in France at the Festival d’Avignon, and brought home for the first time at the festival. 

“Our intentions with this festival are to bring curiosity, wonder, beauty, empathy, pain and new ideas out onto the streets for everyone to engage with,” explains Tanner Mervin, executive director of the Africa Centre, the non-profit organisation behind the festival.

infectingthecity.com

View our highlights from last year’s Infecting the City here.

See more of Sydelle Willow Smith’s photo essays here.

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