Why We Started Design Safaris

Culture

Micha moved from Berlin, I'm from Cape Town. Between us, we kept asking the same question: what would it look like to travel the way a local creative actually lives?

Author

Tom Clark

Photography

Micha Weinberger

Micha and I talk about this often.

The moment it clicked for him was somewhere in Berlin. He was working in experience design, thinking about how people move through cities, what they notice and what they walk past. He kept coming back to the same question: what would it look like to travel the way a local creative actually lives? Not the landmarks. Not the itinerary. The ceramicist. The building that stops you. The place where someone has spent ten years making something quietly excellent.

For me it was Cape Town. I had been living here long enough to know the difference between what visitors see and what is actually here. The gap was significant. What I saw instead were memories, love, joy, aspiration, design and life.

"Design is a way of seeing. A safari is a way of going. Put them together and you have something close to what we actually do."

Micha moved from Berlin. We started aēsplore, and then we started Design Safaris. The name came from a simple idea: that design is a way of seeing, and a safari is a way of going. Put them together and you have something close to what we actually do. We take people off the standard route, into the studios and estates and spaces that most visitors never find, with enough time and context to understand what they are looking at.

We drive a 2013 Land Rover Defender. This was not incidental. The Defender is a working vehicle. It is not trying to be anything other than what it is. Functionally classic.

The tours are private. Small groups, never more than five. The pace is unhurried. There is always time to stop, to ask, to stay longer than the plan suggested. We host, we don't guide. We share the places and creatives that inspire us and

What we have learned, after running these tours through the Winelands, Southern Peninsula and across greater Cape Town, is that the experience changes people's relationship to a place. Guests come back from a day with us and see the city differently. They notice things they had been walking past. That is the thing we are most proud of.

Not every revolution starts with frustration. Some start with curiosity. With a quiet belief that there is a better way to see the world. That is what drives us.

We drive a 2013 Land Rover Defender. This was not incidental. The Defender is a working vehicle. It is not trying to be anything other than what it is. Functionally classic.

Not every revolution starts with frustration. Some start with curiosity. With a quiet belief that there is a better way to see the world. That is what drives us.