Design Week South Africa announced the 2025 dates, marking the second year of this annual series of activations. Happening in both Johannesburg and Cape Town in October, city-wide pop-ups will ignite both cities, encouraging design-lovers, thought-leaders, students and the general public to engage with their city in a new way.
This year, Design Week South Africa will be supported by the V&A Waterfront’s Watershed, Cape Town’s vibrant craft and design space, open daily to visitors of the V&A Waterfront. Partnering on launch dinners, exclusive exhibitions and discussions, by supporting Design Week South Africa, The Watershed demonstrates its investment in the South African creative economy.
The British Council will be supporting an international project, ‘Field Hospital’, presented by artist Andrew Merritt and aided by Loubie Rusch. This transdisciplinary project has been activated in the United Kingdom and Mexico, with the third land restoration zone being in South Africa.
Design Week South Africa is proud to partner with the African International Design Awards (AIDA), the first international awards celebrating the creativity and forward-thinking design across the African continent.
ACTIVATIONS :
Four days of activations, events, workshops, tours and discussions will take place in each city. Highlights include launches from TONIC, Curacion x UNI FORM, FIELDS and Hoi P’loy, an interactive listening room by Andile Buka (supported by Bang & Olufsen), an inner-city multi-disciplinary exhibition ‘Price of Gold’ by Joburg collective Intima Studios, a partnership with Garden Day at Victoria Yards, an exclusive exhibition in collaboration with 54 Mag, and city-wide custom zine stands, made from waste by Wunders, showcasing the latest in South African design-related zines.
‘Myself and the team were blown away last year by the incredible standard of activation across both cities. We were left with a feeling of great optimism and pride in our local design sectors, and we can’t wait to see what the industry has to offer the public, media and fellow design industry members this year,’ comments Margot Molyneux, Founder of Design Week South Africa.
Design Week South Africa is also proud to announce the launch of the Design Directory, a national platform created to spotlight South African designers and creative professionals, and foster greater visibility, collaboration and economic opportunity within the country’s thriving design ecosystem.
This innovative, open-access directory aims to be a centralised resource for discovering and connecting with designers across disciplines — from fashion, architecture and product design to illustration, and digital innovation. The platform is available to both established and emerging talent for an annual fee, with exceptions made in cases where a brand is unable to cover the cost.
‘The Design Directory is a natural extension of our mission at Design Week South Africa: to champion local design, elevate creative voices and build a more connected, sustainable design economy,’ says Margot. ‘We’re building a space where designers are not just seen, but engaged with, commissioned and celebrated.’
Design Week South Africa 2025 is curated by South Africans passionate about this country’s design sectors, the creative economy and growing pride and acknowledgement of South African and, more broadly African, design. The core team comprises Margot Molyneux, Zanele Khumalo, Roland Postma and Simone Schultz, while a broader advisory team, including local and international industry leaders, has also been formed, with members announced later this month.
Having spent 10 years building her namesake clothing studio, Margot Molyneux, a manufacturer and retailer of boutique collections of men’s and womenswear, Margot more recently turned her attention to the world of media, specifically focusing on interiors, architecture and decor, fulfilling the role of Managing Editor of House and Leisure publication and General Manager at independent publisher LOOKBOOK Studio. 2024 brought the launch of, Design Week South Africa, a seemingly natural career transition as she combined her love of design and storytelling with her enthusiasm for the local creative industry and its growth and development.
Since joining the biggest Sunday newspaper and working in various roles at the top lifestyle publications in the country, Zanele Kumalo continues to partner with premium brands to create and lead communities built around the creative economy – art, culture and design. With a twenty-year career in media, marketing and communications that sees her growing the now six-year-old boutique content studio whatzandidnext, she works as the Johannesburg liaison for Soho House Cities Without Houses, a global members club; the founding director of kumalo | turpin, a newly launched contemporary art space in Johannesburg; and on other projects.
Roland Postma believes that building people-first cities is a necessity, not an idealistic goal. With a first class Honours in Urban and Regional Planning from RMIT in Melbourne, he is currently the Managing Director at Young Urbanists NPC, where he aims to inspire a new generation of thinkers and doers around city design and management. Through co-founding the Active Mobility Forum and the public-private partnership Safe Passage Programme with the SDI Trust, he wants to prove that change is possible by providing solutions to local governments around the areas of housing, urban design and transportation.
Following on from her position as editor-in-chief of Asia’s leading design publication, Design Anthology, Simone Schultz brings an international perspective and understanding of the global creative landscape and its evolving narratives. She has spent a decade working with stakeholders in Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa and beyond at the intersection of design and media, helping designers, architects, thought-leaders and brands communicate their stories across mediums, geographies and contexts. Her involvement in Design Week South Africa marks her renewed focus on her home continent, where she will draw on her global experience to help build a window into and a bridge between Africa and the rest of the world.
