Yesterday Rose and I quickly dropped into the Cape Quarter Lifestyle Village for the Design Now! exhibition and it was quite the design treasure hunt! The mini design “festival”, which coincides with Cape Quarter’s 2^nd birthday, celebrates local design and the talented movers and shakers behind the awesome products.

The event features various interactive furniture installations and design exhibits all curated by Freeworld’s Tracy Lynch, as well as workshops and music happenings.

Serving as a design treasure trail, the whole centre has been spun with funky brightly coloured ribbons – each colour leading you to the next exhibition point.

A striking sight to see was the beautiful jumble of unfinished Pierre Cronje chairs forming part of the Old School, New School exhibit and one of Pierre’s artisans strapping up a riempie chair (right there, in the middle of the centre!) . Here we also had the opportunity to taste some exotic teas by Nigiro and unrefined Khoisan seasalt whilst chatting to Neil Stemmet about the launch of his new book “Sout en Peper”.

Thereafter we followed the blue ribbon to the Supernormal exhibit featuring the innovative furniture designs of Pedersen & Lennard – this installation is said to be inspired by Jasper Morrison’s essay, Super Normal.

The next ribbon led us to the stimulating Culture Clash exhibit. It is a spectacular riot of colour and texture, featuring amongst others, exceptional lighting displays by Ashanti Designs and beautiful rainbow coloured ceramics, textiles and furniture pieces.

The last exhibit aptly called, Designer Nature, was a beautiful collection of natural, eco-conscious and nature inspired designs and textures. A true rustic reminder of how nature inspires design.

Another installation that caught our eye was the Emerging Young Design display which boasts with the top 20 designed chairs created by second-year CPUT Industrial Design students in collaboration with Klooftique (it was quite exciting to see these prototypes up close).

Furniture designer, Aaron Kearney, was also hard at work hammering away at the old Airstream caravan parked just outside the Designer Nature exhibit. He was challenged to re-design and install the interior of the caravan in only 10 days and on a very tight budget. After the transformation the caravan is destined for the Old Mac Daddy Luxury Trailer Park in Elgin.

Design Now! ends tomorrow (the 5th), so if you haven’t visited yet, be sure to do so tomorrow. I suggest making a day of it – Cape Quarter has some gorgeous little shops and eateries. Check out the deets: here