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GALVANIZED RECYCLING BINS FRIEDRICH “The analogue of the classic New York trash bin – just on a smaller scale and colour-coded for different materials. A good value-for-money recycling solution.” DAWN “Bringing street vibes into your space is clever, creative and fun. It’s for a young market.” STAINLESS STEEL RECYCLING BIN FRIEDRICH “For those who forgot to include recycling bins in their kitchen layout, this bin is sleek in more than one way.” DAWN “Recycling becomes a smart, classy affair. It reminds one of the type of people who would own a Benz, iPhone and all the other Apple products.” LEGO-STYLE BINS DAWN:“Such fun!” FRIEDRICH“Lego-style recycling bins make absolute sense in a playful sense: modular, like Lego; and different sizes in different colours for different materials.” CHECKAS BIN DAWN “The design…

THE THREE BUILDINGS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED MY LIFE THE MOST ARE ONES THAT I HAVE NEVER BEEN INTO, AND, IN ALL THREE CASES, HAVE NEVER EVEN LAID EYESON. There’s the family compound in a village in western India, which stood somewhere in obscure history, occasionally visited by somebody who made it across the Indian Ocean. There’s my father’s family house in Wills Road, in Durban, which was appropriated under the National Party in the 1950s, and there’s the modest residence in VS Naipaul’s great novel A House for Mr. Biswas, which helped me to imagine being a writer and left me with the hope of one day having a home of my own. Like Israelis and Palestinians, we in South Africa live in imaginary houses, lost houses, possibilities and properties…

Peeping out of a narrow street in Joburg’s Hyde Park is a mysterious house. Owned by a couple with two small children, the house is characterised by many built-in spaces that are functional and doesn’t leave much room to stare at the details. “The owners wanted things to be robust and solid” says principal architect Enrico Daffonchio of Daffonchio & Associates Architects. “What inspired me was the modernist tradition of the 1920s – I’d call the style of the house tropical modernism.” It shows in the floor-to-ceiling glass doors enclosing the living area that slide all the way to the walls. The floors are tiled with 1,8 x 0,6 m flamed granite tiles from World of Marble and Granite. Books like Professor Tim Noakes’s The Real Meal Revolution and Tashas:…

north-west of Johannesburg lies the Cradle of Humankind. A tract of about 47 000 hectares of the rolling landscape here, where humanity’s most ancient origins have been uncovered, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Cliff de Wit’s parents retired to live in the Cradle on what was once a farm and is now incorporated in Khatlhampi Private Reserve. “We found ourselves visiting every other weekend, and wanted a place of our own here” says Cliff. One New Year’s Eve, he and his wife Elsje started to look at sites and Cliff’s brother Lee started to draw up plans. Some years ago, Lee designed and built a pavilion on the farm for Wesley, the youngest of the De Wit sons, using architectural language inspired by Mies van der Rohe and Philip…

The Western Cape is an incredible place. It has everything you come to appreciate once you’ve gained a bit more perspective in life. Brilliant food, fantastic climate, amazing people and a sense of untouched beauty. I was fortunate to enjoy all of this growing up. Food got me through seven years of study. I did an undergraduate degree at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and then a postgraduate course in architecture at the University of Cape Town. My passion for design comes from everyday life. My home is in North London and I work in Soho. London is an incredibly vibrant and dynamic city that ebbs and flows with new trends, so I literally find inspiration on every street corner. I live in a world where I get to…

Eskom keeps leaving us in the dark, so we’re all for exquisite light fixtures that shine whether they’re switched on or off. You could be forgiven for thinking this range of Shape Up lights consisted of delicate pieces of modern jewellery when in fact collages of abstract lampshades are suspended in sculptural compositions via a network of cords and hubs. The use of some surprising shapes and materials – a metal cone, glass sphere, cylinder and arc, for example – form a graphic configuration that is created and adjusted in response to a space’s architecture and function. “These playful collages upend traditional notions of symmetry,” says Dawid Augustyn, managing director of Establishment, exclusive stockist of Shape Up lights in South Africa. “The lights are LED, so they’re also economical.” The…

If you hang out at the right coffee shops, boutiques and galleries in Cape Town, Jozi or Durban, you might have spotted a copy of The Lake magazine. Launched in 2014, it comes out every two months and it’s free. It has a print run of 2 000 units, which are usually picked up within a couple of days. We asked editor Stefan Naude for the scoop on the magazine all the cool kids are talking about. What is the motivation behind The Lake ? A lot of publications at the moment feed the same content year after year. The media is flooded with the same people and we are forced to read about whom they are dating and what they had for breakfast. I’m trying to…

What made you start photographing doors? The power of the hashtag! I was in New York in 2012 and my then girlfriend discovered Doors of New York while browsing NYC hashtags on Instagram. We thought it could work in Cape Town because of the diverse architectural influences. Do you take your camera everywhere? I usually make a list of doors I’ve spotted and return with my Nikon D3100 SLR. Sundays work well, as it’s quieter and most doors are closed. Do you have a favourite door or area for finding hidden gems? Prime areas for doors include the Bo-Kaap, Chelsea Village in Wynberg and the city centre. Do you feel like you may run out of doors someday? When my archive is running low, I post fewer doors, but I…

Think about it: Buying a home off-plan from a developer requires a fair amount of faith and a whole lot of imagination – faith that the important stuff like views and finishes will turn out as promised, and imagination to visualise the floor plans and architectural renderings as an actual space. Enter urban developer extraordinaire Blok, which gives prospective urban apartment owners a real-time 3D interactive experience of their new property and the neighbourhood. It’s done with the super-slick Blok app (free for iPad on the Apple App Store), which allows the user to “walk” through the apartment and explore every feature, including high-end fixtures and Smeg appliances. “We wanted to up the game and give customers an experiential feeling of their new apartment,” says co-founder and MD Jacques van…

CELEBRITY DESIGNERS: 50 INTERVIEWS ON DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE AND LIFE by Maria Spassov In this e-book, lawyer-turned-design-writer Maria Spassov cherry-picks 50 of her best interviews with some of the world’s leading designers. The conversations are about a myriad of topics, including daily routines, favourite books and movies, and how these top designers define success. In one interview, renowned British industrial designer Jasper Morrison enthuses, “If design doesn’t concern itself with real, everyday life, it’s just a form of entertainment for bored people with more money than sense.” This book does just that. More than entertainment, it portrays the real lives, the creative processes and the thinking of design greats such as Morrison, Marc Newson, Billie Tsien and our own Nico van der Meulen. The accessible Q&A format means you can dip…

• VISI’s competitions are open to all South African residents, excluding employees of New Media Publishing (NMP), employees of the companies supplying the prizes, associated companies, advertising and promotion agencies, and their immediate family members. • The winner will be chosen at the sole discretion of the judges, whose decision will be final. No correspondence will be entered into. • Winners will not be eligible for prizes for three months after winning. • The prize is not transferable or redeemable for cash. • Neither NMP nor any of its partners will be held responsible for disputes in connection with prizes or for any loss, damage or injury that may be suffered or incurred by prize winners. • Entrants will be deemed to have accepted these rules and agree to be…

STEFANIE JASON 1. Stefanie, who’s senior arts and culture writer at the Mail & Guardian Friday, was born in the Bo-Kaap on a sunny day in the mid ’80s. 2. Her dream home may be a tree house in Mpumalanga, but for now she is content living in Parktown North, Johannesburg. 3. Stefanie’s passion is visual arts. “I enjoy taking photos, writing about art and reading about it,” she says. Most of all, she loves looking at art. 4. Ethiopian, Indian and South African cuisine are her favourites, and she likes to eat with her hands. 5. Injera, a flat, porous bread traditionally made using teff flour, is the national dish of Ethiopia and Eritrea. 6. Beautiful second-hand furniture, plants and her vinyl collection are Stefanie’s favourite things in her…

THERE ARE MANY HOUSES WE PASS THROUGH DURING OUR LIVES. Some of them remain with us, and we are able to return to them long after they are gone. One such house was a farmhouse in KwaZulu-Natal, just over the hill of the boarding school I attended between the ages of 10 and 14. I first came to know this house because my mother wanted to buy a Welsh pony from the farmer’s wife. We came down the evening before my first day at that school and were invited to spend the night. The farmer was a man from Yorkshire originally. He had a strong, impenetrable accent and pale-blue eyes, and he was always making jokes I didn’t understand. It was the farmer’s wife, however, with whom we were more…

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, BACK IN THE ’70S, WE MOVED A LOT. I remember us living in different towns and cities in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, sometimes in houses with large verandas, another time in a flat on the 17th floor. Once, there was a smallholding with an orchard, but we didn’t stay long enough to see what would grow beyond the blossoms in springtime. As a young adult in the ’80s, I perpetuated this habit. Once, while packing up house again, Paulina Moteyane and I stopped counting the many times we had moved when we reached the number 11. She was a Sotho woman, our domestic worker and my twin daughters’ second mother. Some may disagree, but I don’t think habitual moving is a bad thing. It has its…

The Swartberg is extraordinary. It is time-consuming to get to Prince Albert, which has, to an extent, protected the things that make the area special. The light on the mountains changes from hour to hour and day to day. There is very little light pollution, so the night sky is profoundly beautiful. I love Prince Albert. I was offered the land in a private sale through a friend and could not resist the site with its dramatic views of the mountains. It is within walking distance of Prince Albert, but also has the sense of being remote and connected to the Karoo landscape. There was nothing on the site to begin with. A goal of the project was to make a truly contemporary building that had something of the texture…

The use of planters as an interior and exterior design feature got a major boost when Peter van der Post launched Indigenus in 2014 with a collection of contemporary planters by three top South African designers. This year, he has added designs by two renowned architects to the curated collection, which was exhibited at 100 % Design South Africa and 100 % Design London. “It’s becoming more and more important to find ways of bringing nature into our spaces,” says Peter, “yet the planter has long been overlooked as an item that can really elevate the aesthetic of an interior or exterior landscape and create a seamless transition between the two. I think this is why the architects and designers that have collaborated with us have been genuinely excited by…

“The 365 Days of Origami Project got me recognised both locally and internationally as an artist and allowed me to connect with people and brands. It enabled me to do this as a full-time job. But I use the word ‘job’ very loosely. I’m doing what I love and it seldom feels like work. “In 2002, my brother asked me to fold an origami crane for a project he was busy with. I folded that crane, learnt the pattern and could quickly fold it again from memory. I have a fascination with puzzles and an obsessive nature, so the combination of these traits fuelled my continuous paper-crane folding. In 2013, I started folding other designs – and that’s when I realised I enjoyed working with paper. “I start each piece…

MULTIFUNCTIONAL STAND MIXER “With 12 attachments, the Ankarsrum Original is a true all-rounder yet it takes up no more space than a toaster.” From R9 499. ELECTRIC CORKSCREW “The Vin Bouquet deluxe electric corkscrew is so easy to use it takes the stress out of opening good wines at dinner parties. It is rechargeable and comes with a foil cutter.” R450. SHOESTRING FRY CUTTER “Shoestring fries may seem daunting to make at home, but with a Westmark shoestring fry cutter you’ll be making professional-looking fries in no time!” R829. POTS AND PANS “The Mauviel M'heritage range of copper and stainless steel cookware ensures precision heat control during the cooking process while providing attractive decoration in the kitchen.” From R1980. FRENCH RANGE COOKERS “Coloured appliances are big right now, especially in…

Situated in a beautiful historical building in Stellenbosch is De Warenmarkt, a social hub with trendy restaurants and market stalls selling good beer and wine, delectable cheeses, free-range meats and delicious snacks – with the stylish furniture to match. Cornelis Dumas, with the help of Jackie Fitzgerald, took on the project to design all the furniture for De Warenmarkt, including the bar counter, light fixtures, stalls, and a parquetry table that caught our eye. “Jackie asked me to consider parquet blocks for the tabletop,” Cornelis says. “The herringbone design was used in other places in the building, so that was an easy decision. “I wanted to use reclaimed wood, but the only blocks I managed to find were the smaller type. I was reluctant to use them at first, due…

Topped with a 95-carat tanzanite and flanked by 432 round brilliant-cut, pavé-set diamonds, this gargantuan cocktail ring has a current market value of R2 million. Designed and handcrafted by Yair Shimansky, owner and founder of Shimansky Jewellers, this whopper took three long months to make. • shimansky.com FAST FA CT Tanzanite is extremely rare, a thousand times more so than diamonds. It is found only in a 4 km stretch of land south of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.…

What makes the Kramerville store different from other Coricraft stores? The new Kramerville space is more than twice the size of any other Coricraft store in the country. It offers customers the full Volpes linen collection and carries a significant amount of ready-to-go stock. Basically, if you see it and like it, you can buy it and take it home with you or have it delivered the next day. Also, for the first time ever at Coricraft, you can bring your own fabric into the Kramerville store and select a style of couch, headboard or dining chair – and it will be made for you. There is also a made-to-order curtain department in the new store. Why an in-store apartment setting? The store has been designed around a multilevel apartment…

Bring contemporary flair to your living space with a set of Osterwald and Sons’ Astro tables – so named because they can “orbit” one another like celestial bodies. Handcrafted in white oak, these nesting tables also have organic patterning in the exposed wood grain on the tabletops that resembles the patterns on planets in our solar system seen through a telescope. • osterwaldandsons.com WANT THE PRINT MAGAZINE? Subscribe to VISI now and receive a 30% discount off your one-year print subscription. You’ll pay just R210 for six issues delivered directly to your post box — that’s a saving of almost R100. Use any of these methods to subscribe or renew your existing subscription: • Call 0860 100 456 with your credit card or banking details for debit order arrangements. • E-mail visisubs@rnad.co.za. • Visit…

THE BEST OF THE BUNCH From local artists and their latest pieces to trending videos and new local hot spots, our online Lifestyle section – VISI.co.za/lifestyle – is packed with daily inspiration. WIN A SMEG FAB5 MINI FRIDGE Enter our exclusive online competition and you could be the chuffed owner of a Smeg FAB5 mini fridge in a retro colour of your choice, worth R10 999. Want to be a winner? Visit VISI.co.za/win for details. BOOK YOUR SPOT Go to VISI.co.za/ VISI-events for information about our upcoming (and previous) #VISIGreatSpaces tours. # READER LOVE Can’t get enough of the new issue? Let us know! Tag us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook with a snap of your copy. Thoroughly enjoyed the June/July VISI issue over lunch. Divine Winter Inspirations – @aimeelisas #Cappuccino…

I LONG AGO MADE THE DISTINCTION between a house and a home, a space where people stay and a place where humans live, learn and love together. Growing up, some of my friends had large, beautiful houses, but on a visit there you could cut through the tension between the two parents, and between adults and children. So I have always nurtured the idea of a home like the one at 51 10th Avenue, Retreat, Cape Town. It was a corner building, so everybody walked past our little council house alongside the sand dunes to the train station or the library or the schools or the shops. When you played on the dunes and got thirsty, you came into the house for water. When, as a member of the church,…

The forecast brochure is available at your nearest Plascon retailer, and a full list of credits is available on plasconspaces.co.za. ELEMENT Inspired by nature and organic landscapes, this palette consists of soft neutrals, raw surfaces and versatile, contrasting textures. Think distressed finishes and multiple layers and techniques. HEIRLOOM Rich and heavy palettes create a historical theme in a contemporary setting. Deep greens, maroons and aristocratic colours are adapted and interpreted to give a fresh outlook in a space, while still creating a moody feeling of depth and luxury. DISCOVERY Influenced by the unknown, Discovery uses galactic colours and the universe as a creative muse. Colours and applications are influenced by space and the night sky, with ombre a strong recurring theme. CONNECT Connect contrasts the modern and minimal design that…

You think you’re lost when you turn into Sussex Street on your way to visit @home furniture buyer Lize Viljoen in Woodstock. The buildings lining the narrow street are either derelict or seem abandoned, and a couple of scrappy cars hug the pavement. As you stop to double-check directions on your phone, your eye catches a bright, renovated building a little further along named Sussex Studios. It’s then you realise you’re in the middle of another neglected Woodstock pocket undergoing gentrification, where industrial renovations become homes and businesses for creative urbanites. Just like Sussex Studios, a 51-year-old building that was a panel-beating shop and factory before architect Etienne Britz of Boukuns Architecture & Design turned it into 19 apartments. Lize bought one of these in September 2014, her very first…

At three floors, 21 Rose Street in Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap stands tall compared with some of its residential neighbours. The earliest known record of the early Dutch building pops up at around 1817, when it started life as a wooden clog factory. Nearly two centuries and several incarnations later, including stints as a button factory, a residence and most recently an art gallery, it has found new owners in the advertising agency Radar. Considering the artworks that line its walls, you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s still an art gallery. “We were unhappy renters for 10 years” says agency founder Jason Ray. “Having a home for Radar is important to us. It helps to express what we are about. We are not your typical agency and we don’t aspire to…

Half-British and half-Kenyan, Kelly Mara Withey moved to Paris 10 years ago to study fashion design. And then she moved to Cape Town and opened the three-storey Maison Mara boutique in De Waterkant, home to labels such as Kenzo, Balenciaga, Jil Sander, Chloé, Proenza Schouler and Margiela. When it came to the interior design, Kelly enlisted the help of Robert Sherwood, founder and design director of Robert Sherwood Design. Some of Maison Mara’s highlights are its wooden floors, a Gaudílike staircase, and the bespoke finishes in a must-see marbled bathroom that’s been transformed into a skincare room. We chatted to Robert to find out what went into designing a world-class concept store. What attracted you to the project? Kelly came into our store on Bree Street a little over a…

At the AJ Ceramics studio in Khayelitsha, Adonis Ndimande and a team of seven create ceramic grater plates capable of finely grating foods like garlic, ginger, hard cheese and chocolate. They pour clay into moulds, fire, paint and glaze the pieces and fire them a second time for 9 to 12 hours. We love the plain white grater that Adonis makes, but most of his final products feature the bright hues characteristic of the Xhosa culture. “Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected,” wrote South African writer William Plomer. These words come to mind when you see this kitchen gadget with its European heritage adorned with vibrant African artwork. Two staff members do the painting, taking inspiration for their designs from nature. No pattern is repeated and, because…

The key is to develop a recycling system that works for you. We selected four clear upright 20-litre containers for their price, shape and size. They’re a convenient size and seal tightly, and they cost only R49,90 for one at West Pack Lifestyle. What’s more, supermarket carrier bags fit neatly inside, and with the handles hooked over the clips (to keep the bags open), the lid still seals perfectly. • westpacklifestyle.co.za Send your SMART IDEA to info@VISI.co.za  for a chance to be featured on this page.…