World Design Capital - Cape Town 2014 | workshop

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An installation for Austria Design Net and "World Design Capital - Cape Town 2014"

In Autumn 2014, Austria Design Net commissioned bE to hold a workshop during their exhibition “Design Discourse: Austria - South Africa”. This exhibition was part of a series of events which took place in Cape Town in 2014, the year the city was selected to become world capital of design.

The Austrian contribution aimed to enable a dialogue between the two countries.

The curators, chmara.rosinke tried to find interesting, corresponding aspects between a given project of an Austrian designer and the project of a designer from South Africa and then - display the works next to each other. Also, they formed teams of Austrian and South African designers who would then develop a workshop program for the exhibition.

BE teamed up with Heath Nash, a designer from South africa, who also hosts one of the British Council's Maker Libraries in Cape Town.

During the first days, the group visited other studios, workshops of craftsmen and artists.

Inspired by the wide spread range of creative ventures in Cape Town, the evolved concept aims to create an installation which would provide very basic low-tech tools to give the participants of the workshop the freedom to discover and learn about particular crafts with a little amount of tools. By being independent from the electric grid, it shall also allow taking the spirit of making to any place in nature and on the streets. Since the installation was developed in Cape Town with local (salvaged) resources, it will also stay there after the exhibition ends and become a tool in other workshop situations, for students and the community.

The structure

The main part of the installation is a reclaimed oil drum from a scrapyard. It serves as container to keep all the bits and pieces of equipment, materials and tools together while being on the move.

Once it is placed in a dedicated location, the drum becomes a fireplace or wind-shield for the gas stove.

The heat source is used to cook (tea, braai, etc), produce steam for leather treatment  and wood bending, or also as a smoking chamber to treat pottery. It opens various ways to access very basic approaches to a variety of artisanships and becomes a vehicle for communication, exchange and experiments.


 

1 - Reclaimed oil drum
2 - Metal tubes for steam applications (wood bending, cooking, leather treatment etc)
3 - Metal grid for woodfires, Braai, cooking applications, support for other modues
4 - Gas stove as alternative heat source
5 - Tea kettle, for boiling hot water, cooking, generating steam
6 - additional hand tools, clamps, tubing, fittings, material, small parts
7 - metal rods to support the metal grid in different positions
8 - spring metal bands tfor wood bending process



The team was supported by the Cape Town enterprise “Dennes engineering”. The company provided the infrastructure and know-how to assemble the structure.

From previous projects, bE was familiar with the basic technology of bending wood with the help of steam. Their contribution to the initial experiments during the workshop was to test local types of wood to figur out the most suitable materials for wood bending. All test wood was provided by local designer Cameron Barns.

Others figured out how to use steam to treat leather in order to give it a 3-dimensional structure, or to use it for connecting / joining pieces of wood.

Cut offs from leather production and advice for treatment of the material were provided by Woodheads, a leather manufacturer close to the venue.

Also, Andile Dyalvane, a Cape Town based ceramics artist joined the workshop and demonstrated his knowledge in treating pottery with smoke as a traditional way of coloring.

Other local artists like Jasper Eales, Atang Tshikare, or Chantel Woodman complemented the team during their stay in Cape Town.


Some images of the project:

The workshops were accompanied by talks and presentations
 

looking for material and parts for the installation

Harley Nash donates a tea kettle for the machine, Cameron Barnes cuts the wood for the bending tests to the appropriate dimensions 



Cooperation with Dennes Engineering - from sketch to final object within a week



assembling of the "machine"



the "machine"







first tests - the gas stove allows to use the installation indipendent of electricity like here - on a rooftop




The next step: Andile Dyalwane explains the technique of treating pottery with smoke



The bowl cracked in one place, so Heath Nash shows a perfectly functional "maker-solution" to the workshop participants. 



Due to the windy conditions at the rooftop, the results from the indoors- bending process are much better



The team experiments to find a satisfactory solution for the structure of the wooden base of the test-object



Steam is used to make leather straps soft. When they dry they will stay in position and give strength to the structure





The result of the first workshop.
A smoked ceramic basin, sealed with a strap of PET rests on a wooden tripod which was assembled with leather bands.