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World Design Capital Office : Cacti introduce a natural element. -
World Design Capital Office : Open-plan meeting nooks allow for breakaway groups during workshops and brainstorms. -
World Design Capital Office : Translucent Duroplastic (instead of drywalls) allows natural light throughout. -
World Design Capital Office : The WDC2014-branded reception desk is covered with Astroturf. -
World Design Capital Office : André Vorster, who is organising the WCD2014 New Year’s Eve party, makes use of the boardroom’s Plyable tables by Gregor Jenkin. -
World Design Capital Office : Tables in the central meeting space allow for different configurations. -
World Design Capital Office : A flatpack hatstand by Spaas. -
World Design Capital Office : The WDC2014-branded reception desk is covered with Astroturf. -
World Design Capital Office : Interior designer Etienne Hanekom and WDC2014 CEO Alayne Reesberg. -
World Design Capital Office : Even Woodbender’s Karoo chairs got the yellow treatment. -
World Design Capital Office : Translucent Duroplastic (instead of drywalls) allows natural light throughout. -
World Design Capital Office : The impossible-to-ignore kitchen features a colour-matched SMEG fridge.
PHOTOS Micky Hoyle PRODUCTION Sumien Brink WORDS Nadine Botha
The World Design Capital 2014 team crowd-sourced a temporary work environment in Cape Town’s East City precinct.
The WDC2014 office was a community collab project. “We were told that we can’t pay rent because we are spending ratepayers’ money,” says Alayne, clarifying that they had to find an abode in the municipality’s buildings. “Then, one Sunday night, I was sitting at home and I got this email. Ting! From Steven Harris. A group of property owners in the East City precinct made a formal bid to house our offices. It was the first serious gesture of goodwill and generosity from the community.”
Turning blue-sky ideas into a reality would not be possible in a stuffy, cubicle-locked office painted in shades of drab. Instead, a collaborative area was required with lots of wall space for drawings, whiteboards and all manner of organograms, calendars, flowcharts and post-its.
It is these types of projects and ways of working that made creative consultant Etienne Hanekom’s first interior-design draft inappropriate. “They probably just gave me the brief so they could reject it,” he laughs. “Most clients I work with don’t really know what they want until they see what they don’t want.”
Instead, Etienne broke up the boardroom monolith into a number of meeting spaces of varying privacy and formality. Offices are arranged around the perimeter of the space, and the central area is where all the action happens, with hot-desks for temporary staff and various arrangements of tables and chairs for collaborating.
The structural skeleton of the office layout is a custom-made recycled-steel frame that, when the offices are broken down after 2014, can be melted and reincarnated again. The recycled plywood and translucent corrugated Duroplastic used for partitions were also chosen for their green credentials, but moreover to allow the natural light coming in from the windows to shine through the entire office.
A lot of the furniture is secondhand and rejuvenated, but much more of it has been donated by local designers and manufacturers, including the likes of Gregor Jenkin, Pedersen + Lennard, Design Team, Skinny laMinx, Woodbender and Xanita. Paint was supplied by Plascon and the pendant fluorescent lights by Radiant Lighting and Electrical.
Yellow crates from the WDC2014 stand at Decorex Cape Town were repurposed as shelving, seating and partitions. Alayne calls it – “cr’ative”. Speaking of yellow, Hirsch’s donated a bright yellow SMEG fridge that Alayne reportedly kissed when it arrived. “It just makes my day, every time I look at it,” she beams.
For more information visit wdccapetown2014.com
