Caesarstone Presents The Student Designer Competition 2024

Caesarstone has launched the latest brief in their Student Designer Competition 2024 – to design a museum dedicated to South Africa’s languages. The competition is open to 2nd and 3rd year Interior Design and Architecture Students, from South African institutions only.

Each institution may submit their top 5 entries per department only. Strong concepts will be favoured over fully-realised buildings. Presentation is very important, and an award of R7,500 will be given for Best Presentation!

The brief is to design a museum for South African languages, thus becoming a vibrant celebration of linguistic diversity and showcasing the richness, history, and evolution of the numerous languages spoken in South Africa. The aim should be to both preserve and revitalise endangered languages while recognising the diminishing influence of colonialism on the linguistic diversity in South Africa. Furthermore, the competition requires competitors to dig deep. You may unearth some truly inspiring dialects and typographical shapes to influence your design thinking and creative licence.

This museum should feature spaces such as auditoriums and the like, dedicated to live presentations and live recordings of indigenous languages, highlighting their intonations (i.e., the rise and fall of the voice in speaking) and dialects and how they reflect South Africa’s diverse cultural tapestry.

With the capacity to host interactive workshops, language classes, and engaging displays, the museum would become an immersive experience, inviting both local and foreign visitors to appreciate, engage with, and further understand the beauty and depth of South Africa’s heritage of languages.

Through the practicality of architectural and interior considerations, visitors should be able to explore written scripts, traditional storytelling methods, and the significance of language in different cultural contexts. Lastly, allocated exhibition areas should include interactive displays demonstrating the unique sounds and tones of various languages, their origins, and how
they’ve developed over time.

The Guidelines

The design concept and solution should be easy to read, easy to engage with, and easy to understand with reference to the design problem, adding context to the community and the World Heritage Site that is the Cradle of Humankind.

A suggestion on how it integrates with the existing infrastructure is encouraged. The final design and presentation should clearly outline the context of the design problem, discuss it, and then present a clear and cohesive design solution.

Find out more about the competition here: https://www.studentdesignercomp.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Caesarstone-SDC24-Brief-Design-Digital.pdf.