Designer and architect

Collaborating with Spanish designer Jaime Hayón on your debut product range, then getting it produced by leading European ceramics studio Bosa and launched at the Salone del Mobile during the Milan Design Week is a big deal. Especially when you are just 26.

The collection is the result of Rossouw’s experiments with how 2D patterns can merge with and influence 3D products, done while completing a master’s in product design at the European Design Labs in Madrid in 2010. Disappointed to find on her return to South Africa that the local product design industry is not self- sustaining, she went back to her first love, architecture, in which she holds a master’s from the University of Cape Town.

Now working at the acclaimed Stefan Antoni Olmesdahl Truen Architects, Rossouw continues to explore surface and product design in her free time while conspiring to develop a design course that can bring her European learnings to South African students.

— Nadine Botha

Twitter: @cDesignandArch Blog: reneerossouw.wordpress.com