AN AUGUST 2025 EDITION

Humans were designed to create, that’s why you get sad, anxious, confused and depressed when all you do is consume. Create art, music, patterns, books, pots and pans, a garden, a skill. Whatever your heart desires.
You weren’t built to absorb noise all day. That emptiness you feel? It’s your soul begging you to do something real. Something that isn't just reacting, scrolling, numbing out, or feeding someone else’s ego trip. Create. Paint. Build. Grow. Move. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Tucked into Kericho’s rolling greens, the Sacred Heart Cathedral doesn’t try to dominate the land. The aspiration was to create a structure that integrated seamlessly with its landscape setting, in both aesthetic and functional terms. The Cathedral’s tiled-roof is now a distinctive form in the rolling panorama of Kericho’s hills and valleys.

The building's palette of materials honours and respects the faith and frugality of this rural African context.
The ascending vaulted volume contained under a vast roof fuses African and ecclesiastically historic references. Care has been taken to shape the Cathedral’s space and express the building’s structure - the stone plinth, simply articulated, arched concrete frames and timber-ribbed vaulting are exposed in a strikingly crafted and honest manner.

Wooden doors along the flanks of the church hall open out to naturally ventilate the space and allow the congregation to flood out onto the gardens surrounding the building.
With the exception of the glass sheets used by the stained-glass artist, all the materials, including the Cypress timber (grown in Kericho), which was used for the ceiling, doors and furniture, and the clay tiles in the roof, were locally resourced and fabricated. The ceiling was constructed from finger-jointed Cypress timber slats, designed to accommodate the high range of humidity of the local environment.

Some spaces arrive with history. Others are styled into it. This one does both. Set within one of South Africa’s most iconic architectural landmarks, the home is a layered narrative of old-world mastery and new-age clarity.
The design intention was clear: a lived-in, well-travelled spirit that carries weight—without ever feeling heavy. Antiques meet custom commissions, each one handcrafted by local artisans. Nearly every item has a story—and none of them feel mass-produced.

The furniture is soft. The message is not. There's something radical about reclaiming grandeur and making it speak African—through scale, through pigment, through resistance dressed in velvet.

Drawing from the rich hues of the frescoes, a balance is struck—between boldness and calm, between memory and modernity. Every room is a study in restraint, layered with rich textiles and deliberate colour, a reminder that good design is never accidental.

Cyrus Kabiru was born in 1984 in Nairobi, Kenya, where he still lives and works.
Kabiru is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist, known for his sculptural spectacles or C-Stunners, which are made of retrieved objects and recycled materials sourced on the streets of Nairobi. His intricate sculptural works push the boundaries of conventional craftsmanship, sculpture, photography, design, and fashion. His works deal with transformation and renewal. The design of his works embeds his vision of the future. Each C-Stunner is the product of an innovation process intimately linked to his life-story. Recently, Kabiru has also focused on the deconstruction and reconstruction of radios, bicycles, and other pop objects.

Kabiru’s pieces are not just wearable sculptures—they’re systems. Assemblies of discarded wires, bolts, forks, and beads that speak the language of both invention and ancestry. His work pushes the boundaries of what comfort looks like in a hyper-digitized, throwaway over-consumerist world.

These are not only wearable but also art objects and future relics. Kabiru turns the ordinary into talismans of a new African design language—loud, layered, precise. And somehow still tender

Still on the podcast studio… I’ve now moved into the design concept stage—where things start to feel real and ideas flirt with form. I'm itching to create an image that’s a little outrageous, something that startles the senses just enough to make you stop scrolling. It’s the fun part: playing with possibility before practicality catches up.

With a new week comes a new studio obsession. I invite you to click on my select texture of the week image above—an African textures abstraction —to see what’s inspiring us this August. I’ll see you next week, my friend.
Let’s Connect