2018 design duos revealed
The interior design reality TV competition, Win A Home Design Challenge, is back for its fifth season on SABC 3, at 7.30pm on Thursdays.
Like the 2017 edition, this year’s show will revive the design duo format, featuring three teams of two that will compete as they transform three white-box apartments into dream homes. All this in a bid to claim the title of South Africa’s best immerging interior designers.
This year’s grand prize is a fully decorated penthouse apartment at Paardevlei Lifestyle Estate, developed by Balwin Properties and is valued at more than R3 million.
Team Contrast Control:
Having met at Design College, Kehumile Mate and Nicholas Smit have always been eager to join the creative forces.
Mate hails from Mabopane in Pretoria. He has already accumulated a wealth of experience which is evident in his valiant and dynamic approach to his artistry.
Mate has worked as an interior designer at DHK for two years and now has made his way to Cape Town with determination.
He quit his job to tackle the Win A Home Design Challenge and says: “I left the office-interior design industry for this one chance at making a mark in the residential design-scape. So ‘150% or nothing’ is the mantra.”
Smit, who is equally talented, is from Johannesburg but now stays in Cape Town. He spent most of his childhood in George.
In 2010, he left a BCom financial management degree to pursue his career in interior design and has since spent two years working at ARRCC Interior Design Firm.
Smit and Mate believe in trusting processes, learning from one another and maintaining their youthful inquisitiveness when expressing their creativity.
Team R&K:
Rekopile Belebesi and Koketso Marole met at the Design Joburg Expo this year, only three months prior to being selected as a design duo for this year’s Win A Home.
They sparked an instant connection through a passion born from their love of design.
Marole is originally from Bronkhurstspruit, 50km east of Pretoria. A part-time model and full-time interior designer, she relocated to Cape Town after completing her B-Tech in interior design at the Tshwane University Of Technology
Belebesi hails from the Eastern Cape, was raised in Durban and now resides in Johannesburg where she started her furniture design company Belebesi Décor. Her interest in furniture design and the curation of spaces with bespoke pieces came after she identified a gap in the market for quality furniture for the middle class. She describes her style as compelling, creative, inspiring.
Rekopile’s unique trait is that she has the ability to connect with people, enabling her to understand what her clients want.
Team Perma Peeps:
Melissa Oosthuizen and Sinéad Turner met seven years ago when they studied together at Greenside Design Centre.
They bonded instantly through their shared tastes in design and life goals and they quickly became inseparable but up until before Win A Home, they were living 1400km apart.
Oosthuizen is the owner and chief designer at East Haus Interior Design and Custom Furniture. Inspired by the meeting point of design and psychology, she always had sustainability on her mind, along with job creation, equality and economic growth.
Turner comes from a corporate design background where she gained hands-on experience in the industry by working on projects such as The Woman’s Jail at the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg.
Inspired by how great design bridges the gap between functionality and beauty, her mission in life is to enhance built environments in order to uplift and promote sustainability.