Design in the Central City

Great design requires fresh, open, responsive thinking and doing: in other words, creativity. Creativity in design feeds innovation, and innovation, essentially problem-solving, drives progress. Innovation is key to our economic development.

The City of Cape Town is positioning itself as an innovation hub in Africa. The City is already renowned for medical breakthroughs – fifty years ago the first heart transplant took place here. In 2010 the Joule, Africa’s first all-electric car, developed by Woodstock-based company Optimal Energy, will hit the roads. Despite what people say about the seductive distractions of the mountain and sea, it is possible to have the drive and focus to innovate in Cape Town.

Design in Cape Town is becoming a financially thriving industry, and growing an enabling environment for design needs to be at the top of our priority list. Creative Cape Town studies have shown the central city has a high level of entrepreneurship in creative industries, particularly design-led firms – how can this be nurtured? Local design creatives speak of the city as a space for experimentation – how can this attitude be encouraged?

Creative Cape Town has taken note of how creative hubs like 210 On Long, The Old Biscuit Mill, Media Hive, Bandwidth Barn and The District are drawing together design and ICT creatives, who spur each other on to more innovative ideas and productive ways of working. We’re spearheading the formation of a design-friendly district in the under-utilised east side of the city, creating an area that will draw designers into each others’ orbit, where they can share resources, develop synergies and discover each other’s talents and strengths.

Tied to this are the Creative Clusters: networking events that bring together people from across disciplines from furniture design to ICT to marketing to finance. Creative hubs and events encourage the creation of new partnerships and the spread of ideas. The more we engage with each other, the more momentum we build. Through harnessing design, we’ll create we’ll create our City’s ideal future.

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
- Steve Jobs, 2003

“I’ve been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration. Good design is problem solving.”
- Jeffery Veen, 2000

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
- Charles Mingus

“When you take technology and mix it with art, you always come up with something innovative.”
- Robert Rodriguez, 2006

“When people talk about innovation in this decade, they really mean design”
- Bruce Nussbaum, 2005

Public Space for Public Life

It is a fact well known that the creative design of a city creates an environment conducive to creative thinking and living. If all of your street-facing property is entrances to parking lots, your city is dead. Put shops and cafés and galleries at street level and your city opens up. Make it easy for people to catch public transport or to walk and they’ll naturally network and connect.

The Design Sector in Cape Town

In a research study completed in early 2009, Creative Cape Town found that of 1000 creative entities mapped in the central city, half are design oriented. These businesses are creating buildings, fashion, jewelery, furniture, advertising and ICT innovations, among other things. It can be argued that the large film and publishing sectors also make use of, showcase and influence design.

The East City Design initiative

The East City Design initiative aims to create an environment in the East of the City, where the Central City meets District Six, and where design, media, ICT entrepreneurship and creativity thrive.