Designing for a better world

Future thinking is a good way to put in a nutshell how designers — locally and globally — are approaching sustainability in their work. Design as a vehicle for change — for how we need to live, rather than how we currently live. Design that looks proactively and hopefully at how we can do and make better for a world that is rapidly demanding adaptation.

A designer who is no stranger to this mentality is Heath Nash. As a vocal advocate, and in fact one of the pioneers of creatively using “waste’, he established himself as a champion for upcycling well before it became a buzzword. His lamps in the early 2000s fashioned from post-consumer plastic waste are now iconic examples of the intersection between creativity and sustainability. Head of sustainable design at Circular Squared — a nonprofit that champions circular economic thinking — he also founded Our Workshop (a shared upcycling design studio in Langa, which he handed over to the users of the space in 2022).

Since the early days, Heath’s level of engagement with the circular economy has deepened further. Now committed to driving change on a systemic level, he’s working to educate as well as create. “In 2004 when I first started the range ‘other people’s rubbish’ made by skilled, experienced artisans, my own personal conception of ‘rubbish’ changed. The primary reason for continuing that range and running workshops was to allow other people the opportunity to change their minds too.”

His accumulated experience has culminated in the role he now plays at Circular Squared. Founded by Sean Weldon and Brad Armitage, with Heath coming on board in late 2023, Circular Squared is dedicated to advancing education and innovation. “Circular Squared exists to help educate consumers, designers, manufacturers, retailers — everyone really — about the necessity of changing from a linear economy to a circular economy. We’re doing this through building a community across the design sector by creating a platform for connections to happen, and to create opportunities for real, impactful change. It’s an exciting opportunity for the whole industry to collaborate on and plug in to,” he says.

A social-designer, design thinker, and artist, he attributes his ability to think innovatively to having studied art, rather than design. “It gave me a different lens with which to approach design and thinking about objects and systems, materials,” he says. As far as how this plays out in his design work, it allows him to work on a transformative level with designers and brands — the first being Wunders — not just to design, but to rethink systems and create solutions around waste management. “The potential is massive,” he says. 

Bianca Shapiro from Wunders enlisted Heath’s expertise because she loved his innovative use of “waste” and saw the potential for how Wunders’ offcuts could be turned into beautiful, valuable products, and now the process of development using the company’s waste streams has begun... The family-owned Wunders has a strong sustainability focus, which has seen it previously partner with Decorex Africa on the Future Talks series in 2023, where it supplied brightly coloured seating made using its own factory’s waste materials.

As one of the country’s premier design showcase’s Decorex Africa is an industry leader. And, leading by example, it’s fully embracing sustainability this year, with its theme — Designing for Impact — demonstrating a clear commitment to thinking differently. “We all need to step out of our comfort zones, and embrace innovative approaches that recognise the power of our collective impact,” says Bielle Bellingham, executive creative director of Decorex Africa.

This notion of collective impact was also underscored in the recent showcase “Upcycle: Office Furniture Reimagined,” which took place from April 19-20 at Maker’s Landing in Cape Town. An exercise in collaborative creativity with the goal of solving real world problems, it was an initiative driven by Sanlam, together with property advisory company JLL, and its subsidiary interior design firm Tétris Design and Build. The exhibition commissioned African creators to repurpose waste (imaginatively or functionally) into art.

Looking specifically at office furniture, it sought to highlight this sector’s effect on the environment, one that Covid-19 brought into sharp focus. With office chairs sitting empty around the world, the environmental cost of the industry was driven home — each empty office chair “costing” about 72kg of carbon.

The exhibition honed in on upcycling as a way to repurpose this resource. Participants included Patrick Bongoy (shortlisted for the 2024 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize in Paris), Laurie Wiid (Wiid Design), Hoven Design, Ananta Design Studio, and the Tétris Global and SA teams — who came together to craft repurposed pieces from Sanlam’s outdated office furniture, with each scored on sustainability. The resulting pieces proposed a world of possibility — from swing seats made from desk legs, to an Oxygen Farm Work Pod crafted from discarded desk dividers.

A walkabout for students with participating artists was also fittingly led by Nash, whose passion, experience and sense of urgency is perhaps the push the next design generation needs. “Even after so many years the shift still hasn’t happened enough for designers in general yet; and even less so for the average consumer,” he says.