Abstract
The study seeks to understand contemporary African expression in present-day interior design in South Africa whilst acknowledging the background and context that has led to designers' drive to address and include an African identity in design. Africans share similar histories of marginalisation through European colonial systems and experienced liberation in the last thirty years of the decade. South Africa is the most recent to become a democracy as of 1994. Along with liberation emanated a new way of thinking and a desire to renew the African culture and present a fresh approach that showcases Africans and their culture in a positive light. In South Africa, Interior Designers have not shied away from expressing interpretations of what African interior design is through cultivating an African aesthetic to seek and define their identity.
The study explores what approaches interior designers take to implement their projects and how they manage to do so in the contemporary world of economic demands, globalisation and fast-disappearing trends. This research aims to establish the methods that interior design professionals utilise to present a space with African Identity and further establish the significance of this design approach on the global design community, the South African design community and the African cultural diaspora.
A multiple case study approach was employed to explore real-life contemporary projects through discussion and visual analysis. The study, therefore, identified appropriate case studies executed by South African Interior Design professionals. The data is gathered using qualitative research methods and analysed using a thematic analysis approach across the cases to establish themes that were then presented in detail. The research data analysis methods are expanded and include a visual data analysis using photographs either captured by myself or existing photographs as captured by the practices or presented in media publications. The visual analysis augments the study in understanding the methods discussed in the interviews and assists in understanding the elements that potentially pertain to an African aesthetic in interior design.
The research concludes with recommendations observed through the data analysis process. After analysing the data from the four participants, I reflected on the position of the interior design profession in expressing African identity in design projects, how this has progressed and how it participates in global discourse. More so, the study concludes on the significance of this design approach, hoping that the research questions present clear answers for expressing African identity in contemporary Interior Design.