Six first-year Surface Design students of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology have designed a bench with a strong message on violence against women and children.
The bench was auctioned at the Cape Homemakers Expo at the Cape Town International Convention Centre and all proceeds were donated to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital.

The students decided to take a stand against violence against women and children and designed their bench to convey this message. Twenty designers were asked to design benches. CPUT was the only tertiary education institution.

“The idea of the bench started with a process of fabric manipulation - fabric that grew around the smocked little dress of a five year old girl. “The cacti create the contrast against the beautiful tactile qualities that can be seen in the fabric, colour and texture. This is representative of the contrast between the brutal violence and the innocence of the children.

Our message is not all about negativity. The cacti in our design are beautiful just like the people in our country too are beautiful, regardless of their actions. With this, we want to convey a message of hope and a belief in our country’s future,” says lecturer, Ms Julia Brewis.

One of the students, Inge van der Post, said the process was emotionally draining.

“This is a sensitive topic and it is personal. We used an actual little girl’s dress for our design and we had to think what girls go through and how they grow into women,” said Inge.

For Heseré Gildenhuys the process was an eye-opener. “You get so caught up in your own world, you never think about the problems out there. This made me realise that we have serious problems.”

Weyers Marais was the only male in the group, “We tried to focus on the positive and the negative. It is a message of hope that there is hope for abused children.”

Written by CPUT News
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CPUT Design students have turned their talents to alleviating the scourge of shack fires.

Students from Industrial, Graphic and Surface Design were tasked with creating customised packaging for an imported fire prevention tool called the Fireball.

The FireFighter is exported from China where it is used successfully in factories and small apartments.

The circular ball is tossed or rolled into the fire then explodes when its sensors detect the heat.

Students were divided into multidisciplinary groups of six and had four days to redesign the Chinese packaging of the FireFighter to suit a local audience.

They then presented their work to a panel and a winner was chosen.

One of the winning students Sebastian Bosman, who studies Industrial Design, says each discipline brought its own specialty to the project.

“I think our product is a good reflection of the huge amount of work we put in, the brief was also very specific and the lecturers were very hands on during the process,” he says.

“Everything from the colours to how the packaging could have a dual purpose was carefully considered.”

Industrial Design students focused on the actual packaging and wall mounting, Graphic Design students concentrated on reinterpreting the instructions while the Surface Design students concentrated on the materials used.

The FireFighter is a community outreach project of local company Ritcom who envisage distributing it in vulnerable areas soon. 

Written by Lauren Kansley
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Liaises with the media and writes press releases about interesting developments at CPUT.