Meet the Product Designers Shaping South African Design: The 2026 DOTY Nominees

Across furniture, lighting and objects, a new generation of designers and makers is finding individual ways to work with material, craft, and place – creating pieces that feel distinctly local, while holding their own on an international stage.

For the 2026 House & Garden Designer of the Year (DOTY) Awards, five names have been recognised for their contribution to product design: Hanneke Lourens, Hutch Custom by Warren Turnbull, Locha Design Studio, Phillip Kramer and Studio Kalki.

Their approaches could hardly be more different. Some are rooted in the intimacy of handmaking, others in technology and experimentation; some look directly to South Africa for inspiration, while others explore the possibilities of material and form. 

What connects them is a belief that well-designed objects should be more than simply beautiful. They should have presence, purpose and, ideally, a life beyond the moment.

Here, we meet this year's Product Designer of the Year nominees.

Hanneke Lourens

South African-born and now based on the Northern California coast, Hanneke Lourens brings a personal perspective to contemporary furniture. A former fashion designer, Lourens moved into woodworking after relocating to the US, developing a practice centred on classic woodworking techniques, sculptural forms, and objects made to last.

Her work is perhaps best understood as a conversation between where she is and where she comes from. The Corrugated Collection, her debut furniture range, translates the familiar undulations of corrugated iron – such an everyday feature of South Africa's urban landscape – into carefully crafted wooden furniture. Made from white oak, the collection turns an ordinary building material into something tactile, considered, and collectible.

There is an appealing tension in Lourens' work: the forms can feel playful and almost improvised, yet the making is anything but. Each piece is developed through sketches, models, and full-scale prototypes before being made by hand. Her practice is ultimately about permanence – creating contemporary objects with a strong sense of place and a life beyond a passing trend.

Hutch Custom — Warren Turnbull

For Warren Turnbull, furniture begins with the material itself. The founder and sole maker behind Hutch Custom, Turnbull creates one-of-a-kind pieces from his Cape Town workshop, combining refined modernism with the traditions of fine woodworking. Every piece is handcrafted, signed, dated, and numbered – a decidedly personal approach in an age of mass production.

The appeal of Hutch lies in that balance between restraint and character. Turnbull's furniture has clean, contemporary proportions, but the beauty of the timber and evidence of the making process are never hidden. Tables, chairs, cabinets, and media units are designed to be lived with instead of simply looked at.

His commitment to craft has also translated into recognition beyond the studio. Hutch's work was awarded Best in Show at Decorex Cape Town in 2025, while Turnbull's furniture continues to appear in exhibitions and design platforms across the country.

It is this sense of longevity that makes Hutch compelling: furniture designed not for the season, but for the person who might eventually inherit it.

Locha Design Studio — Tshidzo Mangena

Few designers are interrogating the idea of contemporary African design quite as directly as Tshidzo Mangena, founder and head designer of Locha Design Studio.

Mangena describes his approach as “Afro avant-garde” – a term that captures his interest in imagining African design outside the familiar visual contraction of tradition and heritage. Instead, his work looks towards a more experimental, technologically progressive, and future-facing Africa.

His furniture combines traditional woodworking with technologies including CNC machining and 3D printing. The result is work that can feel futuristic and sculptural while remaining connected to the cultural landscape that informs it. 

More recently, Mangena has turned his attention outdoors with the Akan Collection, a range of furniture designed specifically for the South African climate. With brushed stainless-steel bases and generous, sculptural forms, the collection is his response to a gap he identified in locally designed outdoor furniture – bringing the comfort and character of interior spaces outside.

Phillip Kramer

Cape Town-based designer Phillip Kramer has built a practice around the meeting point of furniture, lighting, and sound. His studio produces high-end contemporary pieces that combine functionality with a distinctive sense of personality, including furniture and loudspeakers designed with the same attention to form as any other object in the home.

For Kramer, the relationship between form and function is central. His work doesn't treat technology as something that needs to be hidden away; instead, it becomes part of the visual language of the object.

That approach feels relevant to the contemporary home, where the distinction between furniture, technology, and art is increasingly blurred. Kramer's work makes a case for objects that perform beautifully while also earning their place in a room.

Studio Kalki — Nikhil Tricam & Nindya Bucktowar

Durban-based Studio Kalki, founded by architects and multidisciplinary creatives Nikhil Tricam and Nindya Bucktowar, sits at the intersection of architecture, ceramics, furniture, and art. Their combined backgrounds – Bucktowar's expertise in ceramics and surface design and Tricam's experience in high-end residential and hospitality design – have resulted in a practice that is difficult to put into a single category.

The studio's work is particularly gripping for its material contrasts. Sculptural furniture and lighting are paired with handmade ceramic elements, while locally produced surfaces bring a tactile quality to interiors. Their Inwabu Bench, for example, combines a precision-engineered steel subframe with individually handmade and glazed ceramic tiles, creating a functional piece that sits somewhere between furniture and sculpture. The design won the Product Design / Furniture & Lighting category at the Africa International Design Awards in 2026.

There is a strong sense of place in Studio Kalki's work, too. Based entirely in Durban, the studio sources the majority of its materials locally, while its designs frequently draw from South Africa's natural heritage.

It is precisely this cross-pollination of disciplines that makes Studio Kalki so interesting: furniture becomes architecture in miniature, ceramics become structure, and everyday objects become opportunities for experimentation.

Five designers, five distinct points of view

What makes this year's Product Designer of the Year category particularly exciting is the breadth of the work. There is no single definition of what South African product design should look like – and perhaps that's the point.

From Lourens' personal translation of South African landscapes and materials, to Turnbull's devotion to traditional craftsmanship; Mangena's futuristic vision of African design; Kramer's fusion of technology and furniture; and Studio Kalki's meeting of ceramics, architecture and art, these nominees demonstrate just how expansive the field has become.

Together, they represent a South African design culture that is confident enough to draw from its surroundings without being defined by them – and ambitious enough to make objects that belong just as comfortably in a local home as they do on the international design stage.

The 2026 House & Garden South Africa Designer of the Year Awards will convene in a private ceremony on 30 September at Steyn City, where the winner of Product Designer of the Year – along with the winners of the other DOTY categories – will be revealed.