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Cosentino surfaces shined in colourful designs at the Samsung Bespoke Challenge

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Cosentino surfaces shined in colourful designs at the Samsung Bespoke Challenge:

A ‘warm and welcoming’, multifaceted yet peaceful space took top honours in the second Samsung Bespoke Home Challenge, in which up-and-coming South African designers were challenged to create an integrated kitchen/living room inspired by a colour in the Samsung Bespoke range. Zwelibanzi Nzuza, a final-year design student from KwaZulu-Natal, centred his design around a adventurous white and yellow multicoloured modular French-door Samsung Bespoke Refrigerator with a grey beverage centre.

Innovative Spanish surface brand Cosentino helped the four young finalists bring their designs to life, kitting them out with the materials needed to create their bespoke space inspired by the colours Clean White, Satin Grey, Satin Sky Blue and Glam Pink. Cosentino provided each of the participants with three slabs of material to decorate their integrated kitchen and living room designs. Other sponsors of the Challenge were St Leger & Viney, Lavish’d, Plascon, Careline Living Spaces, BoConcept South Africa and Wolkberg Casting Studios.

Nzuza’s winning space, themed Clean White, featured Cosentino’s Silestone, a premium hybrid surface made from natural minerals and recycled materials, in the serene Posidonia Green colour, as well as two slabs of Dekton’s ultracompact stone, in marbled Morpheus white and the subtle Micron grey.

Runner-up was Maresa Maartens, a recent Interior Design Honours graduate from Pretoria, who employed Cosentino’s Silestone in Cincel Grey and Dekton in Trance to polish off her sleek, minimalist space centred around Samsung’s Satin Grey colour.

Following the highly propitious inaugural Samsung Bespoke Challenge of 2021, which saw Cassandra Twala crowned the winner, the second edition of the challenge was announced in July 2022 at Decorex. Nzuza and his fellow contestants showcased their designer spaces at the current Samsung Lifestyle store at Design Quarter in Johannesburg for a panel of judges that included first Challenge winner (and founder of MOEA Design Studio) Twala, and Tracey Lee Lynch, the director of Studio Leelynch and Clout/SA.

Nzuza was announced as the winner on 25 May 2023, taking home a R100 000 cash prize. Aiming for a survey that was ‘easy on the eye’, and ‘not overbearing or intimidating’, Nzuza said, ‘I perceived a high-spiritedness in the Bespoke fridge, which is the centrepiece of the design. That inspired sophistication and playfulness in my approach, and I tried to use that as an anchor and a common thread in everything else.’

Cosentino was thrilled to collaborate with Samsung on a competition that brings the emerging talent of South Africa to the fore.

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The Rand Club: Redemption

The “redemption” of the Rand Club is a fascinating mirror of the city’s broader transformation. In 2016, a group of businessmen and heritage enthusiasts stepped in to save the club from permanent closure. They didn’t just renovate the physical structure; they fundamentally “decolonized” the institution’s culture. Today, the Rand Club is a vibrant, multi-racial hub of Johannesburg’s intellectual and business elite. It has opened its doors to the public for events, tours, and as a co-working space for young entrepreneurs.

One of the most striking changes is in the art. While the walls are still lined with portraits of historical figures, they are now interspersed with contemporary African art and photography that challenges the old narratives. The club has transitioned from a secretive “fortress” of the colonial elite into a shared space for the city’s new generation of leaders. It remains a place where history is physically present—you can still sit in the same leather chairs where Rhodes sat—but the conversations happening in those chairs are now about the future of a democratic, African-led Johannesburg. It is a testament to the fact that even the most rigid institutions in “Joburg” must adapt or vanish.