International Advisory Council selected for WDC Cape Town 2014

Following the call for nominations in December 2012, WDC Cape Town recommended three nominees representing local and African design while ICSID nominated two individuals from the international design community.

The IAC has three main roles: it will assist the curatorial panel in placing submissions within a global context; advise Cape Town Design NPC on programme development and be ambassadors for WDC 2014.

"The primary objectives are to provide an external perspective on the WDC 2014 strategy and vision of building social inclusion, reconnecting the City in structure and in spirit and repositioning Cape Town for the global knowledge economy," said Cape Town Design NPC CEO, Alayne Reesberg.

The WDC was first hosted in Turin, Italy in 2008, which was an experimental platform for developing and testing the WDC concept. The first WDC city nominated after an official bidding process was Seoul in 2010 followed by Helsinki in 2012.

IAC members

• Trevyn McGowan - one of the primary developers and exporters of Southern African design to the global marketplace. She founded her company Source 10 years ago and it has supplied Southern African design products to the most important names in design retail around the world. In 2008, it founded Southern Guild, the foremost collectable design gallery in South Africa, showcasing one-of-a kind design pieces locally and internationally at exhibitions including Design Miami, Design Days Dubai and the London Design Festival. McGowan and her partner have since established the Southern Guild Design Foundation, a non-profit organization aimed at supporting the development of designers. She is also director of Design Network Africa, a Danish funded programme that links top designers from 12 countries throughout Africa, assisting them to transform their businesses.

• Kunlé Adeyemi - a world-renowned architect, urbanist and designer. He is currently best known for bringing life to 'Makoko Floating School', an innovative, adaptive floating 'building' on the southern fringe of Lagos lagoon, Nigeria. This acclaimed project is part of an extensive research project - 'African Water Cities' - being developed by NLÉ, an architecture, design and urbanism practice founded by Adeyemi in 2010, with a focus on developing cities. Born and raised in Nigeria, Adeyemi joined Rem Koolhaas at the world renowned Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in 2002. At OMA he led the design and execution of several large prestigious projects in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. These include the Shenzhen Stock Exchange tower in China, the Qatar National Library in Doha and Prada Transformer in Seoul. Adeyemi is also a sought after international speaker, lecturer and visiting critic; recently presenting at Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Milan Design Week.

• Ravi Naidoo - best known in the international design community as the founder of the Design Indaba, the annual conference and expo in Cape Town that convenes the foremost design thinkers of the world. He is the founder and managing director of Interactive Africa, a Cape Town based media and marketing company. Some of the company's more celebrated successes have been project managing the First African in Space Mission and marketing of South Africa's Bid to host the 2010 Football World Cup. He also directed the African Connection Rally - the trip from the northern to the southern tip of Africa in April 1999, which promoted telecommunications investment in Africa. He is the co-founder of CITI, the Cape IT Initiative; a non-profit company is dedicated to promoting the IT cluster in the Western Cape.

• Srini Srinivasen - CEO of Lumium, a creative product design company based in Palo Alto, focused on new product development for medical devices, consumer electronics, mobile accessories and consumer goods. Prior to this role, Srinivasan had professionally led and managed multi-cultural, multi-discipline product design teams that delivered world class and award winning products in the telecom and wireless domains. He has a background in technology and business in instrumentation, consumer electronics, telecom and wireless equipment. Passionate about product design and usability, his design thinking comes from keen observation and use of good and poor products, personal gadgets and user experiences over the last two decades.

• Sean Carney - chief design officer for Philips and chief design officer for Philips Consumer Lifestyle. As the head of the design competence across the company, he is leading global teams delivering insight-driven, meaningful innovation, which bring value to people and business. Sean joined Philips in March 2011. He has more than 25 years of experience as an international creative thought leader in design and management, focused on brand and user insight. He has a proven track record in building, leading and inspiring multi-disciplinary, award winning design teams across the U.S., Europe and Asia. Sean is a regular speaker at international design, business and strategic-design conferences.