Vega School's Interior Design Students Bring Luxury Safari Resort To Life

IIE Bachelor of Arts in Interior Design students from The Vega School at Emeris uMhlanga had just two weeks to turn a real-world client brief into a fully developed luxury safari resort concept. Their concept effectively combined interior design, branding, storytelling, teamwork and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The challenge formed part of this year's Interior Design Collab, a national problem based learning project at The Vega School which gives students the opportunity to solve real-world design problems alongside professional clients.

Working in teams of second and third year students, the students responded to a brief from TMD Studio, a Durban based architecture and design firm specialising in retail, commercial, hospitality and residential interiors.

The brief called for the design of a luxury safari resort in Durban which included its reception, restaurant, boma and fire pit area as well as luxury guest suites.

The resort's name, Nomwane, derived from Nomkhubulwane, a figure in Zulu tradition associated with rain, agriculture, nature and fertility, became the foundation for the students' concepts. Students investigated the story behind the name and interpreted it through their designs.

Musarath Sader (Interior Design lecturer at The Vega School at Emeris uMhlanga) said the collaboration gave students valuable experience in teamwork, client engagement, conceptual storytelling, brand development and professional presentation.

"It challenged the students to produce contextually responsive proposals that established a strong sense of place and communicated a coherent narrative throughout the guest experience," said Sader.

Students also developed logos and explored how their brands could extend across guest facing materials, encouraging them to consider the resort as a complete hospitality experience rather than a collection of individual spaces.

The winning team included third year students Gabi Hayman, Josh Jackson and Annabella Venter and second year students Paige Rennie, Jaime-Lee Rogers and Sibane Dludlu.

Rennie said the experience changed her perspective on collaborative work.

"At first, I was nervous about working in a group because I like to be in control, but I was pleasantly surprised. We all worked so well together," she said.

With a large amount of work to complete within two weeks, the students divided responsibilities according to their individual strengths and met every day. The winning team also drew heavily on the story of Nomkhubulwane.

"There was a lot of beautiful symbolism in the story and we wanted to tell her story through our designs," said Rennie.

This year, students were also able to incorporate AI tools to enhance the design work they had created. The winning team used AI to make their renders more realistic and to create an animated video showing elements such as moving water and people interacting with the spaces.

"We were able to take our work to another level. We did all the baseline work and AI enhanced our work," said Rennie.

TMD Studio was impressed by what the students produced.

"The collaboration really inspired and surprised us. The students are well equipped to enter the industry. Their level of professionalism, and even going above and beyond the brief, was a clear indicator of their eagerness for the industry," said Khensani Sambo (Intern Interior Designer at TMD Studio).

"We have so much to learn from the new generation, as they bring in fresh new ideas that are fun, quirky and unspoiled by the harsh realities of the design field. It's a design ethos that's untouched, unscathed and so beautiful to experience," she concluded.