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Mar 07

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums

Posted in: architecture movies, Cape Town, Urban-Think Tank

Design strategy collective Urban-Think Tank has designed and built a prototypical house as part of an initiative to improve housing conditions for slum dwellers in some of the 2700 informal settlements across South Africa (+ movie).

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums

Urban-Think Tank, which was involved in the Golden Lion-winning research into the Torre David vertical slum in Caracas, has this time teamed up with ETH Zürich university to search for ways that architects can help improve the environment and security of these slums that house approximately 15 percent of the country’s entire population.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums

Working under the title Empower Shack, the team organised a design-and-build workshop in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town that is one of the largest in South Africa, and developed a design for a low-cost two-storey shack for local resident Phumezo Tsibanto and his family.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums

They then worked together to replace Tsibanto’s existing single-storey dwelling with the new two-storey structure, giving the family a new home with a watertight exterior and its own electricity.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums

The designers are now exploring different configurations of the prototype that will allow it to adapt to the needs of different residents, extending up to three storeys when necessary.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums

This in turn becomes part of a wider strategy for rationalising the layout of the entire community, known as blocking out. This involves creating access routes for emergency vehicles and providing basic services such as sanitation and water.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Phumezo Tsibanto’s original home

“Our work on the Empower Shack project is not the result of the usual architectural pursuit for a new housing typology,” said Urban-Think Tank co-founder Alfredo Brillembourg. “While we are absolutely trying to innovate upon the design and technology of low-cost housing, we’re more concerned with the general ‘system’ that surrounds housing in the context of informal South African settlements.”

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Construction of the timber frame

He continued: “This includes the infrastructure that makes housing decent, such as power and sanitation, along with the urban configuration of homes. The Empower Shack project seeks to address these larger challenges, and in doing so, hopefully changes not just the built landscape of places like Khayelitsha, but also the social, political and economic structures that shape residents’ lives.”

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Installing the cladding

Brillembourg and partner Hubert Klumpner are now showing their findings from the two-year research in an exhibition at the Eva Presenhuber Gallery in Zurich.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — The completed shack

Here’s a project description from Urban-Think Tank:

Empower Shack

Can art and architecture lend a voice to segments of the population that go unheard? Empower Shack is a new exhibition presenting an ETH Zürich and Urban-Think Tank project on South Africa, supported by Swisspearl (Schweiz) AG. A collaboration between the Brillembourg & Klumpner Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, South African NGO Ikhayalami (‘My Home’), Transsolar, Brillembourg Ochoa Foundation, Meyer Burger, the BLOCK ETH ITA Research Group, and videocompany, the Empower Shack team was established as a response to conventional approaches in dealing with urban informality, which are unsustainable and painstakingly slow in meeting the immediate needs of the vast majority of South Africa’s urban poor.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Aerial view of Khayelitsha

With its roots in a research, design and build workshop aimed at developing an innovative, replicable, affordable and sustainable shack prototype for Cape Town’s Khayelitsha (the third largest township in South Africa), the exhibition uses film, photography, drawings, painting and large-scale architectural installations to explore the complexity of living conditions in informal settlements, and the social role of architects in helping to address the economic, ecological and security challenges faced by residents.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Empower Shack exhibition at the Eva Presenhuber Gallery

With a population of over 50 million and the continent’s largest economy, South Africa is often seen as a source of relative stability and prosperity in the region. Yet economic inequality remains high. Around 1.5 million households (approximately 7.5 million people) live in 2,700 informal settlements scattered across the country, which faces an overall shortage of 2.5 million houses.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Shack installation at the Empower Shack exhibition

While the government’s record on housing delivery is laudable, the scale of need means informal settlements will remain for the foreseeable future. In response, authorities have slowly begun shifting the focus to incremental upgrading, including committing in 2010 to improve the quality of life of 400,000 households in well located informal settlements by 2014 through improved access to basic services and land tenure.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Empower Shack exhibition entrance

Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, along with their research and design teams and collaborating partners are engaged in an ongoing project to develop and implement design innovations for rapid and incremental informal settlement upgrading.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Blocking out strategy – click for larger image and text

The examples featured in the Empower Shack exhibition are intended to provide immediate strategies to alleviate a national crisis, while remaining embedded within community-driven processes around resource allocation.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Clustering strategy – click for larger image and text

With Empower Shack, Brillembourg and Klumpner reinforce their broader vision for practical, sustainable interventions in informal settlements around the world. They argue the future of urban development lies in collaboration among architects, artists, private enterprise, and the global population of slum-dwellers.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Initial volume sketches showing possible configurations – click for larger image

Brillembourg, Klumpner and their team frequently exhibit internationally in venues such as Kassel (2004), MoMA (2010) and the 13th Venice Biennale of Architecture, where they were awarded the Golden Lion in 2012. Through artistic and didactic presentations, they issue a call to arms to their fellow architects to see in the informal settlements of the world a potential for innovation and experimentation, with the goal of putting design in the service of a more equitable and sustainable future.

Urban-Think Tank develops housing prototype for South African slums — Structural diagram – click for larger image and text

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prototype for South African slums appeared first on Dezeen.

Feb 27

Heatherwick unveils gallery inside grain silos for Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront

Posted in: Cape Town, Cultural buildings

News: British designer Thomas Heatherwick has unveiled plans to create a new art gallery at the V&A Waterfront museum in Cape Town by hollowing out sections of a grain silo complex.

Presented at the Design Indaba 2014 conference this week, Heatherwick Studio‘s proposal is to give the V&A Waterfront a building dedicated to contemporary African art within the cluster of 42 concrete tubes that make up a historic grain silo structure.

“How do you turn 42 vertical concrete tubes into a place to experience contemporary culture? Our thoughts wrestled with the extraordinary physical facts of the building,” explained Thomas Heatherwick.

“There is no large open space within the densely packed tubes and it is not possible to experience these volumes from inside,” he continued. “Rather than strip out the evidence of the building’s industrial heritage, we wanted to find a way to enjoy and celebrate it. We could either fight a building made of concrete tubes or enjoy its tube-iness.”

Heatherwick unveils gallery inside grain silo complex for Cape Town's V&A Waterfront

A elliptical section will be hollowed out from the centre of the nine-storey building to create a grand atrium that will be filled with light from a glass roof overhead. Some silo chambers will be carved open at ground level to accommodate exhibition galleries, while others will accommodate elevators.

Heatherwick added: “Unlike many conversions of historic buildings that have grand spaces ready to be repurposed, this building has none. The project has become about imagining an interior carved from within an infrastructural object whilst celebrating the building’s character.”

Layers of render and paint will be removed from the existing facades to reveal the raw concrete of the silos, while windows will be created from bulging transparent pillows.

“Thomas Heatherwick understood how to interpret the industrial narrative of the building, and this was the major breakthrough,” said V&A Waterfront CEO David Green. “His design respects the heritage of the building while bringing iconic design and purpose to the building.”

Heatherwick unveils gallery inside grain silo complex for Cape Town's V&A Waterfront — Proposed section – click for larger image

Named Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), the building will be a partnership between V&A Waterfront and entrepreneur Jochen Zeitz, whose art collection will provide the museum’s permanent exhibition within some of the 80 proposed galleries.

Education facilities and sit-specific exhibition areas will be provided within the existing underground tunnels. Other features will include a rooftop sculpture garden, an art conservation facility, bookshops, and cafe and restaurant areas.

Heatherwick will partner with local firms Van Der Merwe Miszewski, Rick Brown Associates and Jacobs Parker on the delivery and fit out of the museum.

Read on for the press release from V&A Waterfront:

V&A Waterfront unveils architectural plans by Heatherwick Studio for the historic Grain Silo Complex

Imagine forty‐two 33-metre high concrete tubes each with a diameter of 5.5 metres, with no open space to experience the volume from within. Imagine redesigning this into a functional space that will not only pay tribute to its original industrial design and soul, but will become a major, not-for-profit cultural institution housing the most significant collection of contemporary art from Africa and its Diaspora.

The brief given to Heatherwick Studio was to reimagine the Grain Silo Complex at the V&A Waterfront with an architectural intervention inspired by its own historic character. The project called for a solution that would be unique for Africa and create the highest possible quality of exhibition space for the work displayed inside.

The V&A Waterfront’s challenge to repurpose what was once the tallest building on the Cape Town skyline caught the imagination of internationally acclaimed designer Thomas Heatherwick and his innovative team of architects.

This was a chance to do more than just appropriate a former industrial building to display art, but to imagine a new kind of museum in an African context.

The R500‐million redevelopment project, announced in November 2013 as a partnership between the V&A Waterfront and Jochen Zeitz will retain and honour the historic fabric and soul of the building while transforming the interior into a unique, cutting‐edge space to house the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA). Considered the most extensive and representative collection of contemporary art from Africa, the Zeitz Collection has been gifted in perpetuity to this non‐profit institution by ex‐Puma CEO and Chairman, Jochen Zeitz. The collection will be showcased in 9,500m2 of custom‐designed space spread over nine floors, of which 6,000 m2 will be dedicated exhibition space.

Heatherwick Studio, based in London, is recognised internationally for projects including the UK Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, The London 2012 Olympic Cauldron, the New Bus for London and the redevelopment of Pacific Place, a 640,000m2 complex in the centre of Hong Kong.

For the Zeitz MOCAA project, Heatherwick Studio will partner with three local delivery partners; Van Der Merwe Miszewski (VDMMA), Rick Brown Associates (RBA) and Jacobs Parker. Jacobs Parker will be the lead designer for the Museum fit out.

The key challenge has been to preserve the original industrial identity of the building, which is heritage listed, and to retain choice pieces of machinery to illustrate and maintain its early working character. Heatherwick Studio has met the brief with characteristic boldness and creative flair. The final design reveals a harmonious union of concrete and metal with crisp white spaces enveloped in light.

The solution developed by Heatherwick Studio was to carve galleries and a central circulation space from the silos’ cellular concrete structure to create an exceptionally spacious, cathedral‐like central atrium filled with light from an overhead glass roof. The architects have cut a cross‐section through eight of the central concrete tubes. The result will be an oval atrium surrounded by concrete shafts overhead and to the sides. Light streaming through the new glass roof will accentuate the roundness of the tubes. The chemistry of these intersecting geometries creates an extraordinary display of edges, achieved with advanced concrete cutting techniques. This atrium space will be used for monumental art commissions not seen in Africa until this construction.

The other silo bins will be carved away above ground level leaving the rounded exterior walls intact. Inside pristine white cubes will provide gallery spaces not only for the Zeitz MOCAA permanent collection, but also for international travelling exhibitions. Zeitz MOCAA will have 80 galleries, 18 education areas, a rooftop sculpture garden, a state of the art storage and conservation area, and Centres for Performative Practice, the Moving Image, Curatorial Excellence and Education. Heatherwick Studios have designed all the necessary amenities for a public institution of this scale including bookstores, a restaurant and bar, coffee shop, orientation rooms, a donors’ room, fellows’ room and various reading rooms. The extraordinary collection of old underground tunnels will be re‐engineered to create unusual education and site specific spaces for artists to dialogue with the original structure.

Cylindrical lifts rise inside bisected tubes and stairs spiral upwards like giant drill bits. The shafts are capped with strengthened glass that can be walked over, drawing light down into the building.

The monumental facades of the silos and the lower section of the tower are maintained without inserting new windows. The thick layers of render and paint are removed to reveal the raw beauty of the original concrete.

From the outside, the greatest visible change is the creation of special pillowed glazing panels, inserted into the existing geometry of the grain elevator’s upper floors, which bulge outward as if gently inflated. By night, this transforms the building’s upper storeys into a glowing lantern or beacon in the harbour.

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silos for Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront appeared first on Dezeen.

Jan 24

99c offices by Inhouse Brand Architects feature a waiting room inside a shipping container

Posted in: Cape Town

A bright red shipping container at the entrance to the offices of Cape Town branding agency 99c houses a waiting room for visitors.

The shipping container is one of several unusual interventions introduced by South African firm Inhouse Brand Architects, which was tasked with converting the top three floors of a new development in the east of the city that overlooks the nearby harbour.

The concept for the interior focuses on separating the work spaces from breakout areas that facilitate communication between employees and can be used for meetings or informal teamwork.

“The latest office design thinking contends that collaboration happens at the water cooler and does not necessarily need to tie up an office space or a meeting room that has been earmarked for client use, and often stands empty for most of the day,” said Inhouse creative director Aidan Hart.

To foster a greater sense of integration between employees on different floors, the architects removed a section of the concrete slab between the eighth and ninth storeys and inserted a new staircase that encourages movement around the whole office.

An existing staircase ascending to a mezzanine above the ninth floor was also replaced with a new wooden structure that resembles bleacher-style benches and incorporates steps that can be used as seating.

A large projection screen can be lowered so the steps become a screening room for watching films or reviewing work, while the space underneath the wooden addition hides a small kitchen.

Greenery is used throughout the interior, including in an indoor garden that features six potted trees and cafe furniture positioned on a wooden platform. Elsewhere, plants create green walls that visually separate some of the rooms.

Simple and sustainable materials such as pine and chunky chipboard introduce tactile surfaces that contrast with the building’s concrete floor and steel framework.

Surfaces painted burnt orange, blue, black and lime green are used to demarcate meeting areas and reference the client’s brand identity, while dome pendants with brightly coloured interiors add an extra splash of colour.

Photography is by Micky Hoyle.

The architects sent us the following project description:

99c offices by Inhouse Brand Architects

When Inhouse Brand Architects was approached to create the new Cape Town offices of top local advertising agency 99c, its interior design team used the opportunity to produce an extraordinary – yet more efficient – work environment that sounds the death knell of the conventional office.

Inhouse approached the design process with several key goals, the first, being to enhance the already spectacular site. The 3000 square meter premises occupy the top three levels of the Atlantic Centre, a new office development on Cape Town’s eastern foreshore. There is a magnificent double-volume interior partly broken by a mezzanine level, and one floor below. Fantastic views wrap around the building, taking in the harbour and Devil’s Peak. Being as yet unoccupied, it was an empty shell to start with… Inhouse’s second goal was to create a fully functioning environment to suit the client’s daily business needs; and the third, was to reflect the creative nature of the agency and its employees.

Before starting any design work, an extensive study into the company’s daily activities was undertaken. The Inhouse team, steered by Inhouse Creative Director Aidan Hart and team leader and senior designer Moiisha Visagie, looked at the employees’ possible needs from the perspective of Activity-Based Work principles and was then able to provide 99c with an understanding of what the most effective space-planning layout would be.

Inhouse allowed for all types of interaction and both “high-focus” and “high-communication” zones. High-focus zones were defined as individual desks where interaction with others would be minimized. High-communication zones were defined as spaces that would encourage and allow for teamwork, interaction and collaboration.

In a more traditional office environment, a meeting room or cafeteria would constitute a high-communication zone. Here, however, the need to meet less formally is catered for by various, so-called “campsites”, which are collaborative, shared spaces.
According to Hart, “the latest office design thinking contends that collaboration happens at the water-cooler and does not necessarily need to tie up an office space or a meeting room that has been earmarked for client use, and often stands empty for most of the day.”

Hence, making optimal use of the available area and encouraging collaboration and connectivity, were crucial to Inhouse’s scheme. Particularly, because the office is split over three separate levels.

Eighth floor plan – click for larger image

According to Hart, stimulating connectivity is paramount because one of the problems with corporate office space is level-by-level stagnation where departments are divided into operational silos that foster an “us and them” mentality. “We feel as a design company that part of our strength lies in enhancing cross-floor communications and hopefully improving inter-personal connectivity. In this instance, the client was progressive, and wanted to use the opportunity presented to improve the work environment,” says Hart.

According to 99c Managing Director Andrew Brand, it was “important that our new office space not only expresses our creativity but also encourages and enhances it. As an agency, 99c creates the positive change that our clients require to achieve brand success, and we also embrace this ethos ourselves in our daily lives and work environment.”

Ninth floor plan – click for larger image

To achieve greater connectivity for the 99c team, Inhouse cut a hole in the existing concrete slab between the 8th and 9th floors (where the mezzanine level is located) and inserted a new stairwell. The boardroom was intentionally placed on the 8th floor, away from the 9th floor reception and lounge areas, in order to force movement between the floors.

The existing staircase between the 9th floor and the mezzanine level was also removed and a new stadium structure was installed. The structure houses (and cleverly hides) the kitchen that services the café and bar area below. The stadium steps double as a staircase leading to and from the mezzanine as well as unassigned seating, providing an arena that is a gathering spot for the entire company. A large motorized projection screen, that is discretely hidden when not in use, turns the arena into a big-screen cinema to review work, or watch advertisements and films.

Ninth floor mezzanine – click for larger image

A series of semi-private pods and high-energy meeting spaces was created throughout the space to allow employees to interact freely without tying up “valuable” or already booked “real estate” like boardrooms. These areas reveal a select palette that incorporates the corporate colours. Burnt orange, blue, black and lime yellow are used to brighten detailing and feature walls. Colourful elements include oversized dome pendants that illuminate the generous space.

Taking advantage of this double-volume span, Inhouse installed 6 large trees around which café tables were structurally laid out. This indoor, landscaped garden was positioned on decking and raised slightly to demarcate a communal, informal zone. In addition to the trees, numerous living walls were placed throughout the space to link it to the natural environment. The green factor enhances the interior for the user and softens the office environment.

Honest and sustainable materials such as pine and plywood were used extensively throughout. Textured-looking Oriented Strand Board (OSB), which has a patterned yet smooth finish, was used extensively for tactile impact and warmth. Moreover, it achieves a stylish effect for a modest cost.

In keeping with the theme of sustainability and respect for the natural environment that runs throughout – and also as a nod to the creative nature of the agency’s skills – a recycled shipping container has been innovatively converted into an up-to-the-minute waiting room. It’s “out the box” thinking ironically demonstrated in a box… The container also echoes 99c’s purpose – it exists to produce creative solutions that are shipped around the globe, just as the container, in its original form, is a quintessential method of moving goods around the planet. With the office’s panoramic views of container ships in the harbour, the waiting room serves a subtle reminder to 99c employees of the importance of client service and delivery. In turn, what Inhouse has delivered is a world-class office solution, one that embraces elements of Activity-Based Work thought-systems and tailors these into a standout, contemporary environment for its client.

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a waiting room inside a shipping container appeared first on Dezeen.

Mar 21

Dezeen and MINI World Tour at Design Indaba

Posted in: Cape Town, Design Indaba 2013, Dezeen and MINI World Tour 2013, World Tour 2013: Cape Town

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: earlier this month we kicked off our Dezeen and MINI World Tour at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town. Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs rounds up the highlights of the week.

Above: Dan Roosegaarde of Studio Roosegaarde was one of three Design Indaba speakers to receive a standing ovation

Cape Town is the most southerly destination on our Dezeen and MINI World Tour and the only one in Africa. Located at the southern tip of the continent, on the same latitude as Sydney and with empty ocean to the west, south and east, it is geographically remote but culturally better connected, being a relatively easy flight south from Europe that is without the disorientating time difference of most long-haul routes.

In terms of design, Cape Town has a small but growing scene – mostly clustered in the upcoming Woodstock district, which we featured in an earlier movie. This area is home to galleries and stores including Woodstock Foundry, whose Heavy Metal exhibition (below) was one of the most talked-about showcases of local work during our stay.

The city is set to raise its international profile next year when it serves as World Design Capital but, for now, Cape Town is umbilically linked to the rest of the world primarily through Design Indaba, which was the reason for our trip to the city.

An “indaba” is a gathering of Zulu or Xhosa tribal leaders and the word is used in South Africa to describe a meeting of minds. Design Indaba started out as a bi-annual design conference in 1995 but has grown to encompass an Expo showcasing South African creativity (and which this year featured the Li Edelkoort-curated exhibition Totemism: Memphis meets Africa, above) plus a music circuit (below) and film festival for after-hours entertainment.

Design Indaba Music Circuit

All these activities take place concurrently each year at the end of the Cape Town summer. But for the international crowd, the Design Indaba conference (below) is the main event, attracting an unrivalled line-up of star speakers from around the globe and a sell-out audience of 1500 people per day, around 80% of whom are from South Africa.

Design Indaba stage

The conference’s pulling power is largely due to the charisma and persuasiveness of Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo (below) who has long been on a one-man mission to diversify the South African economy away from commodities and tourism and towards the creative industries, as he explained as he gave us a tour of Cape Town on our first day in the city.

Naidoo has since managed to build his brand into a micro-economy of its own: last year the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business calculated that Design Indaba had added over $100 million to South African GDP over the four previous years, via sales of local products at the Design Indaba Expo and other visitor spending.

Design Indaba 2013 at Cape Town International Convention Centre

It can feel perverse to spend three days in the refrigerated bowels of the Cape Town International Convention Centre (above) rather than on the beach, in the wine lands or exploring upcoming city districts like Woodstock or Bree Street.

Ben Terrett at Design Indaba 2013

And without a theme, the conference is a somewhat random tasting menu of global creativity with web designers (such as Ben Terrett, above, head of design at the UK’s Government Digital Service) following synthetic biologists and architects (like Asif Khan, below) giving way to advertising creatives. But the standard is high and the audience discerning, rewarding favoured speakers with spontaneous applause (the Design Indaba gold standard is a standing ovation) but punishing the unprepared or the cocksure with a deathly silence, a Twitter barracking or even a stampede for the exits.

Asif Khan at Design Indaba 2013

Nine years ago I watched Ron Arad amble on stage, open his laptop and assume the crowd would love whatever he happened to find on his desktop. They didn’t and he spent the rest of the week apologising for his lack of preparedeness. The next speaker, a young Thomas Heatherwick, had spent the entire week rehearsing in his hotel room and he blew his former mentor off the stage. In 2010 the audience won its biggest scalp, laughing Martha Stewart off stage for delivering a sales pitch instead of a heartfelt design homily.

Design Indaba 2013 highlights

Alexander Chen at Design Indaba 2013

Nobody bombed quite so badly this year and there were three standing ovations (Naidoo says this is a record) as well as a notebook-full of tweetable quotes, which seems to be the measure of a good conference these days. “Creativity is a small, defiant act of misbehaving,” claimed graphic designer Paula Scher while Alexander Chen (above) of Google Creative Lab declared that “reducing is not a designer need but a human need” and that his goal with projects such as his work on Google Glass is to provide “less and less user interface”.

John Maeda at Design Indaba 2013

John Maeda (above) touched on a paradox when he said that “design as a discipline is not designed well to be understood” while Brazilian chef Alex Atala (below), in between explaining why his rainforest-inspired dishes often contained burned ingredients and showing some polished culinary videos (Naidoo tells me that some of the best speakers with the best visuals in recent years have been chefs), proclaimed that “crunchiness isn’t a flavour, it’s a noise. Noise is important for a chef.”

Alex Atala at Design Indaba 2013

Atala also said that his children’s plimsolls smelt the same as fine cheese, which chimed with a point made by Daisy Ginsberg (below), a designer working in the area of synthetic biology (and who confessed she received professional coaching to help her with her talk). “Could you make cheese out of human bacteria? The answer is yes,” she said, proving the point with images of cheese made of armpit, toe, hand and nose bacteria.

Daisy Ginsberg at Design Indaba 2013

Advertising guru John Hegarty (below) closed the conference with an assured talk based on the notion that “cynicism is the death of creativity.” “If you destroy something you have to propose something else to take its place,” he said, summing up why he felt punk was an anti-creative movement as it proposed no alternative to the system it set out to destroy.

John Hegarty at Design Indaba 2013

Hegarty also apparently spent days in his hotel room preparing his talk and counter-intuitively it seems that older, more experienced speakers work harder on their presentations than upcoming talents, who are more inclined to wing it. The explanation might be that they have less to lose.

Standing ovations

Nicholas Hlobo at Design Indaba 2013

The first standing ovation went to Johannesburg artist Nicholas Hlobo, the only South African on the big stage this year and the winner of the unofficial “best entrance” award. Hlobo descended slowly from the rafters inside a fabric cocoon to a live musical cacophony while a subtitled projection explained his work and its relationship to his Xhosa culture and in particular its rites of passage. It was a powerful, well-rehearsed and uncompromisingly African statement that thoroughly seduced a crowd that likes to see speakers make an effort.

The second ovation went to Dutch “artist and innovator” Daan Roosegaarde (pictured top) of Studio Roosegaarde, whose stage presence and design-can-change-the-world rhetoric was manna to the Indaba crowd. Roosegaarde’s roster of projects included clothes that become transparent when you become aroused (above) and a Smart Highway featuring solar-powered road markings, wind-powered lighting, surfaces that display warning patterns when the temperature drops below freezing (below) and charging lanes for electronic vehicles.

Smart Highway by Studio Roosegaarde

This was coupled with the observation that while design attention is lavished on cars, the roads they drive on are given virtually no thought at all, even though the highways network is the biggest manmade structure on the planet.

David Adjaye at Design Indaba 2013

Architect David Adjaye (above) was the recipient of the third ovation and also the only speaker allowed to overrun the strict 40-minute time limit, since his discourse first on the geography and architecture of Africa (above) – drawing on 11 years of research that involved visiting every country on the continent and which culminated in his 2011 book Adjaye Africa Architecture (below) – and then a selection of his built projects, had the audience rapt.

Adjaye Africa Architecture

Pulling him off would have sparked a riot, particularly as he saved his most resonant project until last: the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture (below) will occupy the last remaining plot on Washington’s showpiece Constitution Avenue and is perhaps the most significant cultural memorial to black history ever built anywhere.

Adjaye spoke at Design Indaba in 2006 but since then his ability to hold an audience has increased in line with his body of work and, as one of the world’s leading black creatives, this felt like a triumphant homecoming for a London-based architect born in Dar es Salaam of Ghanaian parents.

Hugh Masekela at Design Indaba 2013

It’s hard to summarise any conference in words but even harder to distill the essence of Design Indaba, since its greatest value lies not in the conference hall but in the collective experience enjoyed by speakers and journalists from the four corners of the planet. The Design Indaba “speaker bubble” is one of the world’s best and most hospitable networking opportunities for the design world and takes place against a backdrop of cocktail soirees, beach picnics, wine-estate lunches and gigs. These included an exclusive performance by legendary jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela in a tiny jazz bar (above) with Design Indaba’s own fleet of branded MINIs on hand to ferry speakers and the media between engagements (below).

Design Indaba 2013 MINI

This sense of community, and the conference’s ability to make or break the reputation of speakers, means it’s hard to argue with Naidoo’s claim that it is design’s answer to Davos and the biggest and best design conference of the world. And for speakers fortunate enough to get invited, the best advice is to prepare your talk as thoroughly as you can before you arrive, so you don’t miss anything when you get there.

Hugh Masekela with Design Indaba 2013 speakers

Above: Design Indaba 2013 speakers with Hugh Masekela (centre) and Ravi Naidoo (far left). Design Indaba photos are by Jonx Pillemer

Read more about Daan Roosegaarde’s concepts to make highways safer here.

See all our Dezeen and MINI World Tour reports from Cape Town »

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at Design Indaba appeared first on Dezeen.

Mar 16

“Segregation was a design exercise during Apartheid”

Posted in: Cape Town, Design Indaba 2013, design movies, Dezeen and MINI World Tour 2013, Dezeen movies, World Tour 2013: Cape Town

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: with Cape Town serving as World Design Capital in 2014, we spoke to programme director Richard Perez about how the title can help the city overcome problems inherited from the Apartheid regime.

During the course of the movie we drive from Cape Town Stadium, built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in the affluent waterside area of Green Point, before heading out on the motorway to the impoverished townships between the city centre and the airport.

"Segregation was a design <br />exercise during Apartheid"

The sharp divide between rich and poor in Cape Town is one of the issues that Perez hopes the World Design Capital initiative can help to overcome. “The reason Cape Town won [World Design Capital designation for 2014] was not to showcase how good we are at design,” he explains. “Our bid was more about how we can use design to transform the challenges we have as a city.”

"Segregation was a design exercise during Apartheid"

The interview was filmed at Design Indaba, where World Design Capital 2014 launched its call for submissions from designers.

Many of the problems in Cape Town today are linked to South Africa’s troubled past, Perez says. “Segregation was a design exercise back in the Apartheid years,” he explains. “Everything you see in Cape Town – the segregation and the informal settlements that exist outside the metropole – exist by design. We’re now going through a process of seeing how we can redesign that, or undesign it.”

There are also new challenges to be overcome. As the South African economy continues to grow, the townships surrounding the city grow too, as people move from the country to the city for work. “What you have now is massive population in those areas, trying to commute into the area where the work is,” Perez explains. “The city is trying to play catch-up all the time to provide facilities for these immigrants.”

"Segregation was a design exercise during Apartheid"

Perez wants to take design “out of the city centre and into the townships, so everybody can start to understand the value of design so we can create more economic growth within the informal settlements and the informal market.”

However, he understands that the scale of the challenges Cape Town faces means they won’t be easily overcome. “We won’t solve the problems in 2014. But it is an opportunity for us to look at more creative ways of dealing with those problems.”

"Segregation was a design exercise during Apartheid"

This movie features a MINI Cooper S Countryman.

The music featured is by South African artist Floyd Lavine, who performed as part of the Design Indaba Music Circuit. You can listen to Lavine’s music on Dezeen Music Project.

"Segregation was a design exercise during Apartheid"

Aerial image of Cape Town is courtesy of Shutterstock. See all our Dezeen and Mini World Tour reports from Cape Town.

The post “Segregation was a design
exercise during Apartheid” appeared first on Dezeen.

Mar 08

“South Africa has always had an upcycling culture”

Posted in: Cape Town, Design Indaba 2013, Dezeen and MINI World Tour 2013

In the second part of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour around Cape Town, Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo shows us the former industrial suburb of Woodstock, which the city’s design community has recently made its home, and explains the importance of upcycling in South African design. Watch the movie »

The post “South Africa has always
had an upcycling culture” appeared first on Dezeen.

Mar 01

Africa today is a place of “renewal, regeneration and growth”

Posted in: Dezeen and MINI World Tour 2013

In our first Dezeen and MINI World Tour despatch, Ravi Naidoo takes us on a tour of his home city and explains why he founded the Design Indaba conference that is taking place in Cape Town this week. Watch the movie »

The post Africa today is a place of “renewal,
regeneration and growth” appeared first on Dezeen.

May 18

Honda – Go Everywhere

Posted in: go everywhere, goe

Voici une nouvelle publicité vidéo pour la marque Honda en Afrique du Sud. Cette animation très réussie reprend l’idée de pouvoir se déplacer constamment grâce à toutes les technologies que le constructeur a pu développer. Une création de l’agence DDB, à découvrir dans la suite.

Jan 04

Cape Town Spa House

Posted in: afrique, Cape Town, metropolis design, resort, Spa House

L’agence d’architecture Metropolis Design a récemment pensé “Spa House”, une impressionnante résidence située à Cape Town. Construit sur le flanc d’une montagne, cet espace splendide et paradisiaque est à découvrir en images dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

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Nov 10

Flying Rhinos

Posted in: flying, green renaissance, rhinos

Une impressionnante opération organisée par WWF en Afrique du Sud afin de déplacer un groupe de 19 rhinocéros noirs par des hélicoptères militaires vers une province plus sécurisée pour eux. Une initiative pour préserver l’espèce, filmé par Green Renaissance. Plus d’images dans la suite.

Previously on Fubiz

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