Having come back from the pg bison / 1.1618 student 2015 design awards ceremony at the rand club in Johannesburg last week. It is extremely encouraging to see the future of design in SA. It looks wonderfully healthy. South Africa's creative young talent pool is getting encouragingly confident and students are outshining / outsmarting the previous generation on an alarming scale.
This is how it should be - the design exuberance of youth showing the jaundiced , pessimistic, older guard and old gits a way forward. When i was a much younger student, this wild design energy was stifled by control mechanisms and very small education does not colour out the lines mindedness. The very thought of going against the established design minds, was a ruler smash to the knuckles, so to speak. It is incredibly exciting to see that the time of the artist, the poet, the dreamer is once again upon us. Its here! flourishing! in the South African design wild landscape. Generally this time reaches its crescendo as a world war is imminent, but hay, at least the creative output now, allows the doldrums of the trenches to have a reflective artistic shine.
What i love about student design minds of today is they are not afraid to experiment with conceptual thought, They are not afraid to express design ideas and they fervently defend design concepts with a passion that is most encouraging and refreshing.
The forever a student wildetecture mind in me salutes this wild design energy - Vivaladraught! , Vivaladesign! Because there is a time for revolution and a time to create and a time to rebuild and design.
The design future does look bright here in Africa.
An organic shaped wildetecture skateboard deck - an Excalibur pulled from stone.
