Hasta La Ideas

Thingking, a Cape Town-based design/build studio was honored this week with the 2013 Most Creative Stand Award at Design Indaba Expo. Their Twitter-activated Rube Goldberg machine served as a backdrop for their minimal objects.

Simple Trestles

Thingking is Lyall Sprong and Marc Nicolson’s “designer-maker consultancy.” Based in Cape Town’s design district of Woodstock, the three-year-old company does a range of client work ranging from interior/exhibition to interactive products (check out their Lipton Vending Machine, “the world’s first floating vending machine.) We wrote about Thingking’s converted Gypsy Caravan buildout for The Soft Machine, an ice cream truck that debuted at Design Indaba last year.

At this year’s Expo, they showed a small range of their design objects—I particularly loved their Pot Plant Stands, freestanding or wall-mounted powdercoated steel frames that are designed to support potted plants as singles or in series. Their nesting plywood Nominal boxes, represent the duo’s design ethos. They work with common materials, creating objects that, “are designed by the people that choose them. Undefined, non-precious, archetypal frameworks.”

Nominal Boxes

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