Design Indaba is not for designers

The globally acclaimed line-up of speakers are handpicked annually by Design Indaba founder, Ravi Naidoo, to present their case studies to a devoted audience.

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Anyone who needs to see better ways of achieving outcomes, from policy-makers, civic planners, communities and artisans, will benefit from the inspiration on Design Indaba’s platforms. Many of the speakers focus on urban environments that have politically and historically grown up around us and which may no longer be coping or conducive to the challenges and opportunities of the contemporary citizen.

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It has become a tradition to give homegrown South African speakers opening slot of the three-day conference.

Inspired by a presentation from a former Design Indaba luminary, Stefan Sagmeister, the story told by @ChanelCartell and @stevodirn of how they quit their comfy jobs in their Johannesburg advertising agencies to embark on a year-long travelogue, reveals many of the principles that makes design thinkers so valuable an asset:

• Get out of comfort zones: In their case exchanging a set lifestyle of working, going to gym, coming home, making dinner, shopping, etc., with a once-in-a-lifetime experience
  
• Systematic planning: Finding solutions to fund and plan the bucket-list holiday via volunteer work and other means – for example working with husky dogs in the Arctic Circle
  
• Discipline and resourcefulness: Using their craft to produce saleable artworks, photography and video footage and keeping on working every day
  
• Technological know-how: Using Google maps to ensure every photo taken features a chalk board stating how far, in kilometres, they were from home, which informs the name of their Instagram feed and travel blog
  
• Communications skills: Using digital media to garner 115,000 social media followers on and extensive coverage via the internet and in other media
  
• Visual data: The creation of charming animated infographics cataloguing various nationalities, types of accommodation and modes of transport they experienced on their journey.

The above skillsets and qualities give an insight into the designer's mind that makes them an asset in business, change management and other sectors.

What it means to inhabit a city - Paloma Strelitz and James Binning, Assemble

Architects Paloma Strelitz and James Binning from UK-based Assemble, demonstrate problem-solving skills by playing with the concepts of “what it means to inhabit a city”.

They specialise in involving communities in the sourcing and making of civic projects and it is this approach that has won them a coveted Turner Prize for their work on the historic terrace house of Granby in Liverpool. They describe the area as having been subjected to “curated dereliction” and the award-worthy project sees communities involved, not only in refurbishing and bringing life back to neighbourhood streets, but also generating new livelihoods via the production of community-made mantlepieces, door handles and objects from polished crushed-stone rubble, ensuring new sustainability and revenue streams for communities that may have been all but written off.

Proud citizen of the Republic of Johannesburg – Thomas Chapman

The work of repurposing public spaces to the benefit of their inhabitants, is being taken seriously by Thomas Chapman (@ThomasChapmanSA), founder of the award-winning Johannesburg-based Local Studio. Chapman contextualises his work within Johannesburg’s architectural and cultural heritage, explaining how things like the New York-style approach to high-rise buildings, forced removals, the 1970’s economic downturn and the relocation of an entire CBD to Sandton has impacted its citizens.

The work of this studio of 10 people, sees the repurposing of a Dance Studio as a multi-purpose space in Hillbrow, to become a destination for international dance groups such as Alvin Ailey, the Cuba Ballet and others; the cost-effective benchmark Africa School for Excellence in Tsakane and new pedestrian corridors, go some way to “desegregating” old built environments.

Especially poignant is the project of getting authorities to agree to the widening of the traffic bridge over the Westdene Dam to accommodate a five-metre-wide pedestrian promenade and cycle lane, with Chapman needing to point out to the international delegates, that while they may take this for granted in their cities for centuries, this has historically not been a consideration in ours.

I’m not a designer, I’m actually a design – Hugh Masekela

It was revealed that Local Studio’s Trevor Huddleston Community Centre, honouring former Sophiatown residents, has kindly been fast-tracked by intervention from Ravi Naidoo and Design Indaba core sponsor, Nedbank. Telling the story of little known, but much revered Anti-Apartheid activist, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, who is credited with buying 14-year-old Hugh Masekela his first trumpet, Masekela himself was revealed to be waiting in the Artscape wings to surprise the ecstatic Indaba audience with a live performance.

It’s like Uber for social services

In the same way as new model businesses such as Uber has no cars and AirBnB owns no fixed properties, UK’s Participle Relational Welfare model has succeeded in expanding British Welfare services despite budget cutbacks, by facilitating the creation of expanded social networks and communities or likeminded people to pool resources such as lifts, outings, skillsets and support and in so doing getting on top of issues such as healthcare, ageing and employability.

“Informality is the new normality” - Alfredo Brillembourg

Back on Indaba stage after a period of some years, the genius civic engineer, Alfredo Brillembourg returns to present how he has applied his theories closer to home – Masiphumelele fire disaster and the pilot phase of a cluster of 68 houses in BT-Section, Khayelitsha.

Brillembourg identifies that at the rate of global urbanisation, the only way to go is up, researching solutions for the optimum density of cities – describing how in the great cities of Europe or our own Bo-Kaap, row houses grew up in multi-layers, with gaps being filled in over time and how the fact that a city like London is “not even gridded” and “made up of little villages” is what makes it so dynamic.

One of the main principles of Brillembourg’s South American projects, shown at his last Indaba visit, was that of the creation of frameworks of building which allow completion over time by individuals and communities within the informal sector. It is overwhelming to see these principles successfully applied in our own city via the two-story Empower Shack and spatial planning or “reblocking” processes take shape. Add to this new micro-financing models, solar roofs with potential to sell back power to the grid and other variable and sustainable funding, and the possibility for people to become powered and empowered becomes a reality.