Creative mission: beyond the superstar posturing, Design Indaba aims to catalyse South Africa's growing design community. Marcus Fairs reports from the 10th gathering held earlier this year in Cape Town.

The location wasn't bad: the opening cocktail party took place on the sands of Clifton 4th Beach in Cape Town, with the sun blazing, the Atlantic Ocean lapping a few feet away and the Twelve Apostles--the dramatic seaward escarpment of Table Mountain--rising behind. But it was the company that made it really memorable. Lounging on the sofas and milling on the sand were some of the world's most celebrated creative talents: industrial designers Jasper Morrison and Hella Jongerius; graphic designers Andy Marks and Neville Brody; musician Brian Eno, brand consultant Wally Olins and advertising guru Tony Davidson.

Just a sample of the 40-odd speakers who had flown in from around the world to address the 10th annual Design Indaba conference in February this year. Many had never met before but, over the ensuing week of parties, dinners and serene lunches on wine estates, new networks would be forged and lifetime friendships formed. The heady 'speaker bubble' that forms during Design Indaba is the design world's equivalent of Davos.

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But where were the architects? Rem confirmed then cancelled, just as Will Alsop did last year, and others were too grand for Cape Town, apparently. Thus the discipline was severely under-represented, as it has been in previous years, with Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity and New York-based South African Lindy Roy the only overseas speakers. This is a shame for architecture, as the profession could generally do with getting out more and mixing with a more varied crowd.

Design Indaba has no theme or agenda and little in the way of structure, consisting of three solid days of back-to-back designer talks. The standard is frighteningly high--young Swedish design team Front set the benchmark this year with a talk that was part school show-and-tell and part News at Ten Noir, with the four black-clad female members taking it in turns to introduce video clips of explosions in forests and rats eating wallpaper. Spanish designer Jaime Hayon was another young speaker to confirm his arrival as a major talent with a warp-speed rush through his years as a professional skateboarder, a designer of cult Japanese dolls and now one of the hottest talents on the planet.

Cape Town architect Jo Noero was a surprise star, showing up his prima donna starchitect counterparts with an inspirational but deadpan account of his years working with underprivileged black communities and his belief in architecture as tool to improve lives, rather than skylines. Design Indaba likes to throw a few non-designers into the mix too. Brian Eno gave a tedious lecture on art theory while musician Reggie Watts gave an extraordinary performance in which he multitracked complex musical arrangements live on stage using only his voice, and then sang over the top in a falsetto. The audience loved it: they loved everything. So did the speakers and you could see many of the young designers growing in stature as the week wore on.

Design Indaba's mission is to inspire South African creative businesses and thereby help transform the country's economy from one dependent on commodities such as gold and diamonds, to one that adds value to those commodities through design. Most of the 2500 who attend over the three days are from creative businesses across South Africa. The conference is Design Indaba's flagship but the organisation also produces Design Indaba Expo--a trade show of South African design that runs alongside the conference--plus outreach, exchange and education programmes and a quarterly magazine.

Yet the Design Indaba glamour--speakers get chauffeurs and helicoptor rides--can sit awkwardly with the knowledge that, on the other side of Table Mountain, 80 per cent of Cape Town's 3 million population are living in shacks and that unemployment nationally is 25 per cent with an HIV/Aids infection rate running at 10 per cent.

Design Indaba has tentatively begun to address these issues, last year initiating a tree-planting scheme in Soweto to offset the carbon emissions caused by flying speakers in from around the world. This year, designer Roelf Mulder's prototype for a cheap, effective condom applicator was voted best product in the show, and this year also saw the launch of a project to improve living conditions in the Cape Town shack districts. To mark Design Indaba's 10th birthday, 10 international architects and designers who have previously spoken at Design Indaba will be teamed with 10 South African practices. The brief is to produce 10 prototype affordable homes that will cost no more than 50 000 RSA (around [pounds sterling]3600) each to build and take no more than 10 hours to design. Stars lined up include David Adjaye, Thomas Heatherwick and Shigeru Ban.

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Though such initiatives seem geared as much towards generating headlines as to solving problems, at least they draw attention to issues that all architects and designers instinctively care about yet rarely get the chance to address.

www.designindaba.com