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Ed's LETTER We have a new cover design with a tweaked VISI logo, and we recently won a couple of accolades at two international print magazine awards. All of them relate to one person. For those of you who don't know Mark Serra, he is VISI's multitalented creative director, with a career that spans many top local and international magazines, and a signature style that melds a distinctively graphic use of typography with an elegant, pared-back design approach. Given the changes you see and the fact that this is our annual Design Issue, I'm handing Mark the mic for some insights into his process and how he applied it to VISI. MARK'S DESIGN PHILOSOPHY “It's about telling a story. I draw from the personality and essence of a story and…

CONSIDERING YOU'VE PICKED UP a copy of this month's VISI, it's safe to assume you're a lover of beautiful things. After all, VISI has established itself as “South Africa's most beautiful magazine”. When you're captivated by something beautiful, what follows is a natural, euphoric and deeply personal experience. Contrarily, paying homage to something beautiful can be as unnatural and distressing as navigating a minefield. The “appropriation” battleground is suffused with slippery slopes, sinkholes and foot traps in a foggy maze, where historical context, identity, monetary gain and power dynamics form a crisscross of laser beams to warily navigate. In this morally awakened, aka “woke”, era, literal theft of the beautiful things of another's culture is so last century. Today, beauty lovers and creators should think conscientiously before adorning themselves in…

THE GOODTIME HOTEL With a name like this, it's no surprise that fun was had in the design of this artistic collaboration between its high-profile owners - producer and singer Pharrell Williams, and Miami nightlife entrepreneur David Grutman. And the good times come not just in the form of legendary weekend pool parties but in the aesthetic too; it boasts everything from pink crocodile-print wallpaper to a pink-striped rooftop pool offset with pastel umbrellas. Yes, there's a lot of pink at The Goodtime, but that's what elevates it to Wes Anderson levels of cool and breezy. Go for the vibe, stay for the good looks. thegoodtimehotel ESMÉ MIAMI BEACH This revival property on Española Way (opposite top) was known as the Spanish Village when it opened in 1927, and was…

“YOU KNOW, I COUNTED EVERY SINGLE BRICK IN THIS HOUSE,” says architect Adèle Naudé Santos, smiling, as she stands looking around the main bedroom of the first house she ever designed — a solid Modernist four-bedroomer completed in 1967 and situated in a narrow, leafy avenue in Cape Town's Kenilworth. She may not actually be joking. Their modular layout, visible through the unplastered whitewashed walls, means you could conceivably measure the dimensions of the house brick by brick. US-based Adèle may now be a world-renowned architect, but back then she was just starting her career, and this was her first-ever build. And as if the stakes weren't high enough, the client was her father, the late architect Hugo Naudé. “My father didn't want me to become an architect because he didn't…

WITH ALL ASPECTS OF THE INTERIOR, THE GOAL WAS TO RETAIN THE ATMOSPHERE AND SPACIOUSNESS OF THE CHAPEL. LOCATED IN THE HEART of Bennebroek village in the Netherlands, the neo-Gothic St Lucia monastery has seen various tenants come and go. Built in 1896 by the Sœurs du Sacré-Cœur (the Sisters of the Sacred Heart), it was initially a boarding school for girls from wealthy Catholic families. This was a short-lived endeavour, and with (no doubt) heavy sacred hearts, the Sisters sold it to a fellow Catholic order, the Franciscans, who founded the St Lucia monastery here in 1920. Theirs was a much more successful residency that lasted until 2007, when the buildings were sold to a property developer, who transformed them into seven townhouses and 11 apartments. One of those…

PETER VAN DER POST KNOWS A THING OR TWO about rolling with the punches. As founder of Indigenus, a leading Cape-based producer and exporter of high-design planters, over nearly a decade he's weathered everything from production issues and distributor challenges to expensive marketing fails. But for Peter, it's all part of the cut and thrust of working in the creative industry - each setback is an opportunity to learn and improve. Indigenus was born in 2014 when Peter, then running a plastics-moulding company, saw a gap in the market for highend planters that fused memorable designs with natural wood, cork and stone. There was a steep learning curve ahead, though, from trade fair flops to a crash course in shipping costs. And understanding export pricing was critical, he says. “From…

NKULI NHLEKO, ART CURATOR What piece of iconic design would you love to own? The Sanlorenzo SX112 superyacht is a hallmark of my daydreams. It is a perfect blend of entertainment, adventure and luxury. Picture being cocooned in Egyptian cotton sheets and lulled to sleep by the soft swells of ocean waves, then waking to that cool, salty sea breeze. Imagine enjoying a mimosa and eggs Benedict while taking in the ever-changing scenes along the coastline - a montage of pristine forests and old cities built into the cliffs. What better way to process those emotions than seated on premium Italian furniture with a glass of prosecco? I crave the exhilaration of being enveloped by the twinkling sky above and the dark sea below. Nothing ignites existential reflection quite like…

GROWING UP AS A KID in the Eastern Cape and singing hymns in assembly halls, astrology was considered “the devil”. Satanic, even. Noone could quite explain why — that's just how it was. You see, in East London, you either became a rugby player, a Christian or a surfer. While I can honestly say I tried the first two (if touch rugby counts), none of those really options worked for me. Instead, I enjoyed art classes, creating imaginary worlds in our subtropical garden, and reading up on subjects such as ghost stories, the RMS Titanic and unsolved mysteries. Luckily for me, my family moved to Cape Town when I was 15, and I found myself in a city that was more open-minded and tolerant, and that made me feel like…

VISI | SEA POINT APARTMENTS SITUATED IN the middle of Fresnaye and the Sea Point Promenade, and wedged between a combination of dated flats, samesame modern apartment blocks and an excess of commercial entities, is The Flamingo. As with all structures designed by architects extraordinaire Robert Silke & Partners, nothing about this building is ordinary. Known for his love of Art Deco, Modernism and PoMo, Robert refers to The Flamingo's aesthetic as “Bauhaus on heat”. Unlike the uninspired steel-and-glass high-rises infiltrating Cape Towns Atlantic Seaboard and CBD, The Flamingo — similar to the architecture studio's Tuynhuys apartments in the city centre and Anew Flotel in Green Point — is a breath of fresh air, with curved white walls, black accents and a spectacular glass-bricked eight-floor stairwell that makes you want…

INTERIOR-ARCHITECTURAL STUDIO TONIC may have had a showroom in the Johannesburg design precinct of Kramerville for 10 years, but it feels fitting that this space has now returned to Parktown North. The old Joburg suburb is a hub of art galleries and trendy restaurants, and is also at the epicentre of the area that Tonic has inhabited since its founders Greg Gamble and Philippe van der Merwe established the company at the end of the 1990s. In the early days, they had offices up the drag from Parktown North in the then-blisteringly cool Rosebank “design quarter”. In the 2000s, Tonic's Parktown Quarter shop and office was the stuff of cracking window displays and legendary launch parties. For the last decade, Greg and Philippe have had their studio right around the…

WHAT'S YOUR VIEW OF THE FUTURE? Is it resplendently rosy, or are humans destined to end up on a far-off planet, mining a rare spice and dodging giant sandworms? As a reader of news, I regularly plummet down gloomy rabbit holes of electricity outages, global warming, political power struggles and corruption. Add my obsession with pop culture — and especially dystopian films, books and series — and can you blame me for my Wednesday Addamslike outlook? These fictitious futures are bleak. If Margaret Atwood's 1985 bestseller The Handmaid's Tale is on the money, we are destined for a military-style dictatorship in which women's reproductive rights are usurped. This doesn't sound so far off when you consider the fact that the landmark American abortion court case of Roe v Wade was…

IF GILLIAN HOLL'S PARENTS HAD HAD THEIR WAY, their daughter would have become an optometrist. “But all I kept thinking about was designing creative frames,” she says from her office at Veld Architects’ HQ in Lanseria. “I grew up in the platteland, and wasn't really exposed to many professions. It's only when I went to write an aptitude test at RAU and chatted to people there that I realised architecture could be an option. Life happened to me.” The only child of a mining engineer and a teacher, Gillian moved around a lot as a child due to her father's job, but always lived in relatively rural towns across the Free State, North West and Gauteng. “My childhood was very grounded in nature,” says Gillian. “We hiked a lot and…

AS MANY COUPLES DID DURING THE PANDEMIC, Lauren Shantall and her husband Derek Eyden re-evaluated their lifestyle. To beat the claustrophobia of their new work-from-home regimen, Lauren, who runs her own PR company, and musician Derek would regularly pile into the car with their 13-year-old son Daniel, and make the trek from Rosebank in the heart of Cape Town's suburbia to the Deep South — the colloquial name used for the slack-paced string of suburbs that hug the Cape Peninsula's coastline. “We were waking up three, four times a week to go for sunrise swims,” says Lauren. “Covid meant that I suddenly lost 40% of my business — but it also meant that I could work from anywhere. We realised we could minimise our petrol bill and just move to…

WHEN ASKED what makes Play Braamfontein's office special, founder Adam Levy responds simply: “A 30-metre-long, floor-to-ceiling panoramic view of the Johannesburg skyline.” He is right, of course; the vista, which includes the iconic Nelson Mandela Bridge and a multi-storey Shepard Fairey mural, is breathtaking. But this workspace is so much more than a view. Located in a Brutalist 1970s office block, now home to the area's weekly Playground Market, with a concrete facade that was designed by famed abstract sculptor Edoardo Villa, the property development company's llth-floor office is simple and light-filled, and offers a sense of calm away from the urban madness below. Its industrial white walls and exposed concrete ceiling are a strong contrast to almost homely parquet flooring. This is the perfect canvas to show off Adam's…

WHEN JULIA LAUNCHED GENERATION IN 1990s JOBURG, South Africa was emerging from an insular apartheid wilderness where conservative design had dominated. “We started out 28 years ago, when our country had limited access to international design. We were innovators in the industry, bringing in new ideas and creativity,” she explains. Her luxurious contemporary work made its mark (ed's note: it even featured in the first issue of VISI), and her design projects under the Julia Day Interior Architecture and Design moniker, as well as the coveted international brands she represents as Generation, continue to inspire. juliaday.co.za GENERATION, 2015 Generation was started in 1994 as a showcase for my contemporary design pieces. Our first small store was in Rosebank; eight years later, we moved to Hyde Park Shopping Centre. It was…

TREND FORECASTER, CREATIVE CONSULTANT, PUBLISHER AND ALL-ROUND DESIGN AFICIONADO Lidewij (Li) Edelkoort has long had a love for the southern hemisphere's boundless creativity. Her talks were, for years, a highlight of Cape Town's annual Design Indaba conference. In her latest book. Proud South, already in its second print run, Li - together with Lili Tedde and Mariola Lopez Mariño - celebrates the talent and diversity found in this part, of the world, honing in on Latin America, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. The creativity of each of these regions is brought to life through vivid and detailed imagery that captivates as it educates. Li believes that, “A southern generation of creatives is standing up, expressing local craft, embracing regional materials, recognising ancestral practices and cherishing indigenous values… with a…

ARCHITECTS ARE ALWAYS INTERESTED IN LIGHT - after all, it's what gives expression to the architectural forms they create. Every now and again, however, they actually swap over and design a light themselves. We spoke to locals who've done just that. ZNAKE BY ENRICO DAFFONCHIO Enrico Daffonchio is known for his highly sustainable architecture. His projects include the carbon-zero office development at 78 Corlett Drive and landmarks such as The Bank in Rosebank not to mention a slew of Tropical Modernist homes notable for their simplified aesthetics but warm, rich textures. “Znake was an exploratory project that was based on how to use the relatively new technology of LED lighting when it became available about 15 years or so ago,” says Enrico. “The beauty of the LED lighting tech is…

“This Singaporean design duo's solution inspires us to be more adventurous when using screens as room dividers, to create personal spaces and redesign the way we live.” - ANNEMARIE MEINTJES Be inspired - and share your results with us on Instagram by tagging @visi_mag and @am_visi…