Welcome to Design Indaba Festival 2019 and to the wonderful city of Capetown, South Africa! Established in 1995 with its globally acclaimed Design Indaba Conference, the Design Indaba brand has evolved into a multidisciplinary platform that champions all of the creative sectors. The annual Design Indaba Festival in Cape Town now also includes the highly popular Emerging Creatives programme, Most Beautiful Object in SA, Design Indaba FilmFest, Music Circuit, multiple Simulcast versions of the Conference in cities around South Africa, and other special events. Read more about the Festival in our Design Indaba 2019 Event Guide!

About Design Indaba

First of all, let’s start with a short introduction of Design Indaba: a multifaceted platform committed to a better world through creativity. The aim is to inspire and empower people through creativity, for them to have the will and power to create a better future. Design Indaba has become a respected institution on the global creative landscape, based on the foundation of the annual Festival this Design Indaba 2019 event guide is about. Design Indaba has attracted and showcased the world’s brightest talents since 1995.

DESIGN INDABA 2019 EVENT GUIDE

Design Indaba Conference 2019

The highlight of the creative calendar, the Design Indaba Conference brings together the people using design and innovation to create a better world. Known as the highlight of the creative calendar, Design Indaba’s flagship event has evolved into so much more than a conference. With the years, the Design Indaba Conference has evolved in something so much greater than a normal conference. It has in fact become an immersive experience that includes design talks by the bigs creative industry, live music, performance and theatre, fashion shows, product launches and dance.

By surprise and unexpectedly, sometimes it also features appearances by the leaders of the creative industry. As we suggest in this Design Indaba 2019 Event Guide, come to Capetown to confront the world’s leading design ideas and to discover the creative currency that is leading the way in innovation. It’s an opportunity that you don’t want to miss in the ever-evolving world that is design and innovation. The Design Indaba Conference installs the world’s most radical minds as your guides. Their motto?

“A better world cannot be achieved without creativity”

Top 3 Speakers at Design Indaba 2019

Here are our picks of the top 3 speaker that will come and perform at this 2019 edition and that according to this Design Indaba 2019 Event Guide you will not want to miss.

Hannah Barry

Curator and founder of Bold Tendencies and Hannah Barry Gallery. Hannah Barry is the founder of Bold Tendencies Community Interest Company and Hannah Barry Gallery, both of which are based in Peckham, South London. For more than a decade Bold Tendencies has transformed its car park home with a programme of contemporary art, orchestral music (hosting the BBC Proms with The Multi-Story Orchestra in 2016 and 2017), opera, dance and architectural projects. These include Frank’s Cafe and the Straw Auditorium designed by Practice Architecture, Simon Whybray’s pink staircase and Cooke Fawcett’s Peckham Observatory.

John Pawson

Architect and Interior designer. John Pawson has spent over thirty years making rigorously simple architecture that speaks of the fundamentals but is also modest in character. His body of work spans a broad range of scales and typologies, from private houses, sacred commissions, galleries, museums, hotels, ballet sets, yacht interiors and a bridge across a lake. As Alvar Aalto’s bronze door handle has been characterised as the ‘handshake of a building’, so a sense of engaging with the essence of a philosophy of space through everything the eye sees or the hand touches is a defining aspect of Pawson’s work. His method is to approach buildings and design commissions in precisely the same manner, on the basis that ‘it’s all architecture’.

Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez

Last on Design Indaba 2019 Event Guide top picks is Inventor, designer, architect and engineer Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez. He is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Skipping Rock Lab, a London based start-up with the goal of making packaging disappear. The company is supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. It has won the World Technology Award by Fortune and TIME, the WIRED start-up of the year and currently is the Innovator in Residency of SKY.