Products of the year

Recovering from the recession with a sense of humour intact and style-challenges met required designers to be particularly crafty in 2010. For some, it was a year of graphic cut-out design, with sharp lines and minimal colours signifying a disciplined, less extravagant outlook on life.

Local hairstylist Candice Wyatt-Minter scooped the best global stylist award at the Davines' World Style Contest in Berlin with her perfectly cropped and layered copper cap look. Her edgy hairstyle was devoid of excess, focusing on technique and contrast for its impressive impact.

She said the inspiration for her winning design was a fashion collection by international designer team Viktor & Rolf who responded to requests to reduce expenses by cutting up their tulle dresses with a chain saw. Literally.

"With the credit crunch and everybody cutting back, we decided to cut our tulle ball gowns," one half of the duo, Rolf Snoeren, said.

Holes tunnelling through reams of net ruffles and frocks sliced in half made an appropriately humorous statement on our dire economy. I love fashion that brings a smile to my face.

I smiled again when I watched a style-challenged friend's reaction to the Balenciaga fall-winter 2010 shoe range.

"Who in their right mind would actually spend good money on that?" he asked dumbfounded. "The shoes look like a lot of junk stuck together."

Surprisingly, he wasn't wrong. Making an oblique comment on the recession by using found objects for the creation of the range, Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière said that he was "inspired by domestic things . stuff that is simple, that we find every day".

Ironically, at prices of more than £2000, only the most uncommon of people can afford to wear junk on their feet. But considering the art movement, objet trouvé (ready-made art)founded by Marcel Duchamp at the beginning of last century, these designs, if you think of them as art, are a real bargain.

In South Africa, art went public with the first in a series of inner city Johannesburg projects. Mary Sibande's iconic figure, Sophie, from her critically acclaimed exhibition, Long Live theDead Queen, went large. Sibande's artworks, displayed as 19 giant building wraps, turned downtown Johannesburg into the world's largest outdoor gallery. The idea, according to Lesley Perkes, CEO of Artists at Work and curator of the project, is to bring art out of the realm of the northern suburb elite and place it in shared public spaces to be appreciated by everyone.

The inner city is already home to a number of extraordinary works by some of South Africa's esteemed artists. William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx collaborated on the Firewalker project, which is a large sculpture at the end of the Queen Elizabeth bridge. The sculpture is a fragmented object - you can only make out the figure if you see it head on. Also gracing the city is Clive van den Berg's giant eland in Braamfontein.

In Cape Town, a graffiti artist currently garnering world acclaim, Faith 47, adorned a city council-owned facade with a beautiful woman and child.

Infecting the City, curated by Brett Bailey, puts performance-based art on the streets of Cape Town every year.

Of public art, Bailey says: "Art in public spaces activates and energises those spaces, and stimulates people. It brings about engagement with the world around us. It edifies beauty and values and creativity and ideas within a society and thereby fosters civic pride."

While artists took to the streets this year, designers saw light on the horizon of the recession by winning local awards with lighting designs. New kid on the block, Andrea Kleinloog, won the 2010 most beautiful object award at this year's Design Indaba with her Lab Light, a design inspired by medical equipment.

Michael Forst won the Haute Lumiere 2010 competition with his Replay design, based on stacking spaced translucent plastic plates around a fluorescent to create a continuous play of light.

"CDs are great for this owing to how they reflect light, and it was also a chance to upcycle something that is typically discarded," he said.

The Vuvuzela Lamp, by John Edwards, was snapped into production by South African design company Weylandts after he won the Elle Decoration Solve award. Obviously influenced by the iconic noisemakers from World Cup, it was a fait accompli that the "big event" would be translated into lasting South African design.

In architecture, the Dalton Reserve, created by Koop Design using only the materials and skills available on site, was the top choice at the AfriSam-SAIA Awards for sustainable architecture.

The exhibition building, Hapo, at Freedom Park, Pretoria, successfully combined practical elements with stories of South Africa's tumultuous past, showing how narrative could be interwoven with architecture.

Architecture came into the spotlight in 2010 with Architecture ZA, the country' s first architecture mega-event held at Johannesburg's Arts on Main. The event is likely to become one of Africa's premier urban culture festivals.

Of course, South African architectural design in 2010 was dominated by stadiums, stadiums and more stadiums.

As design in 2010 translated into lifestyle, we saw new and wonderful bicycles coming onto the market made from light composite materials. We also saw plenty of examples of the fold-up variety that you can stack and carry. Note to Johannesburg town planners - all major international cities now have bicycle routes.

Speaking of cycling, upcycling has become the new recycling in 2010. It is the process of converting waste materials or used products into new materials and products.

Katie Thompson of Recreate used pieces of junk to recreate a unique recycled range of furniture.

Despite, or because of tight economics, we've had a good year of design and have got plenty to look forward to, especially with Cape Town bidding for the 2014 World Design Capital status with its slogan: Live Design, Transform Life. See capetown2014.co.za