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Win a Home Season 5 winners Team R&K, Rekopile Belebesi and Koketso Marole. -
The winning kitchen featuring the Gold Bottom Pot pendant lights. -
Team R&K won both the lounge and kitchen challenges. -
Team R&K won the living space and balcony challenge. -
The guest bedroom. -
The bathroom. -
Team R&K turned their spare room into a "glam room". -
Team R&K turned their spare room into a "glam room". -
The master bedroom and en suite.
WORDS Amelia Brown IMAGES Jan Ras VIDEO Private Property on YouTube
VISI has been involved in the last three seasons of Win a Home, and this time the publication’s role was to be the imaginary client of one of the design duos, Team R&K, who were the overall winners of Season 5.
Over the 12 weeks, the three teams were challenged with designing three brand-new apartments at Balwin Properties’ Paardevlei Lifestyle Estate in Somerset West. Rekopile Belebesi and Koketso Marole of Team R&K had early success as joint winners of the first task, the guest bedroom and spare room, and went on to win the kitchen challenge, where they got inventive commissioning Nikki Schomer, owner and designer of Gold Bottom Pots, to create pendant lights out of her signature gold-bottom plant pots, as well as the final task, the living area and balcony challenge.
Team R&K’s glamorous and sophisticated aesthetic proved to be a hit with the season’s judges, too: Bryan Courtney of Private Property, Slade Brookes of Balwin Properties and Buhle Mathole of Kabu Design Architects chose them for the Judges Choice prize of R100 000.
We caught up with Rekopile and Koketso to find out what’s in store for them in 2019…
What does good design mean to you and how did you apply this philosophy to your apartment?
Rekopile: For us great design is about striking a balance between being aesthetically appealing and practical. Our design styles are technically different: Kokesto is more industrial and down-to-earth, while my approach is more high-end and elegant. Merging these styles really helped embody that design philosophy.
Koketso: The industrial side of our choices practically ensured that there was solid design thinking behind our layout. And then the high-end eye enhanced the furniture choices, bespoke pieces, finishes and textures.
What were some of the highlights?
Koketso: Our highlights were winning the kitchen challenge. Neither of us had ever designed a kitchen before and having the judges celebrate our choices really gave us confidence.
Rekopile: And then there was winning the final lounge and balcony task, and ultimately the whole competition. We are still recovering from that! We’re so happy and grateful.
What did you learn along the way?
Rekopile: We learnt a lot about the importance of being consistent and having a visual language when designing an entire house – you can’t have disconnected ideas and choices in every room. A house has to have a design narrative and there has to be a flow.
Koketso: We also learnt to trust in God more, in ourselves and in the creativity we possess.
What does the win mean to you?
Rekopile: I think it shows there’s space in the South African design landscape for an innovative approach. I mean we converted pot plants into pendants! That was a big deal! It also shows that there’s room for women and precisely women of colour in the industry. It’s a great time to be alive!
What’s in store for Team R&K in 2019?
Koketso: We are going into business together. Win a Home helped us realise that individually we’re awesome, but together we’re powerful, and we gravitate towards the latter!
Rekopile: We want to continue to design spaces both in South Africa and the continent, facilitate conversations around making design more inclusive in SA, and sharing/creating opportunities for young people in the industry.
Stay up to date with Rekopile (@rekopile_recko_belebesi_) and Koketso (@koketso_marole) and watch the final when team R&K were crowned the winners here.
