In a world obsessed with speed, Laurie Wiid van Heerden champions the precision and intention of true craft. The Cape Town designer behind Wiid Design builds not just furniture, but feeling. Pieces that hum with originality, honesty, and a kind of grounded beauty that could only be born at the southern tip of Africa.
A Studio Built on Why
Every morning in Observatory, before the noise of production begins, Laurie Wiid van Heerden walks through his studio and runs a hand across the surfaces. Wood, cork, clay, metal… each waiting its turn to become something alive.
“Design should do more than function,” he says. “It should feel. It should evoke, provoke, and connect.”
That’s his why – the thread that ties every table, vessel, and sculptural form together. Wiid’s work sits at the meeting point of material and emotion. It asks you to slow down, to touch, to notice. He builds objects that belong as comfortably in showrooms and galleries as they do in real, lived spaces. Objects that absorb stories, soften rooms, and somehow make the ordinary feel sacred.
Wiid began in design school but left to pursue a more practical, hands-on path. Three years apprenticing under carpenters, casting bronze at foundries, sanding, carving, failing, trying again. Later, he worked alongside sculptor Wim Botha, soaking up the discipline of art and the patience of process.
That background forged a stubborn streak of independence. He doesn’t follow trends, chase likes, or mimic what’s popular overseas.
“Originality and uncompromising quality are non-negotiable,” he says. “If a design doesn’t have a reason to exist, it doesn’t leave the studio.”
There’s something quietly radical about that: a refusal to rush, a faith that depth will outlast hype. His studio isn’t a factory line; it’s a workshop of persistence. Pieces evolve over months, sometimes years, until they earn their place in the world.
Wiid’s language is material. He speaks in grain and texture, in the way light grazes a surface.
Cork became his defining dialect. Not because it was trendy, but because no one else was listening to it. He saw potential where others saw packing material. In his hands, cork became structural, sculptural, sensual. It could soften a room, quiet a space, carry the warmth of nature into something sleek and contemporary.
“Cork adds a strong message about luxury and sustainability,” he explains. “I’ve never come across another material that can do so much.”
Over time, it became part of Wiid Design’s DNA, used not as novelty but as philosophy. He pairs it with wood, steel, ceramic, glass; he moulds it, sands it, pushes its boundaries. Every experiment begins with a question: What if?
Craft as a Conversation
Walk into Wiid Design and you’ll hear collaboration. Not the loud, corporate kind – the kind where ideas pass quietly between hands.
“There’s a kind of magic in the exchange of ideas,” Wiid says. “Where boundaries blur and new possibilities emerge.”
His partnerships with artists, ceramicists, illustrators, and metalworkers aren’t about signatures sharing a label. They’re about learning. He sees every collaboration as an experiment in trust: give the right people freedom, and the work deepens.
That generosity comes from experience. Wiid’s early mentors taught him resilience, humility, and the power of consistency. “You can take what resonates and leave what doesn’t,” he says. “But never lose your integrity.”
He carries that lesson into every project. Whether it’s a large commission or a one-off artwork, he insists on respect – for the craft, the client, and the people behind the process.
To live with a Wiid Design piece is to live a little slower. A chair that grounds a room. A surface that invites touch. A vessel that makes you curious about how it was made.
“I want my work to bring people closer to the experience of feeling, not just seeing or using,” Wiid says. “If someone senses calm or curiosity because of something I’ve made, then I’ve done my job.”
That quiet emotional intelligence defines his practice. His objects don’t shout; they speak softly but clearly to something human. They remind us that design isn’t just problem-solving – it’s connection.
Cape Town is more than home; it’s a teacher. From his studio windows, Wiid sees the mountain, the light shifting across its slopes. That landscape, rugged, patient, enduring, seeps into his work.
“Being rooted in Africa means working with both challenges and beauty every day,” he says. “It pushes you to be resourceful, to collaborate, to design in a way that’s thoughtful and unmistakably ours.”
South Africa’s creative community is still writing its global story, and Wiid is one of its clearest voices. His studio represents a new kind of African design: inventive, self-sufficient, proudly local yet globally fluent.
Every bench, lamp, or vessel that leaves Wiid Design carries that duality. The humility of handcraft and the ambition of world-class design.
What’s Next
Even after international exhibitions, awards, and more than 200 designs, Wiid doesn’t talk like someone who’s “arrived.” He talks like someone still in motion.
“I never feel like I’ve made it,” he says. “The future will come, but for now we keep creating with intention, one project at a time.”
The next frontier for Wiid Design is expanding its cork-moulding capabilities, opening doors to new forms and more accessible ranges. But ask Laurie what excites him most, and he’ll tell you it’s the same thing that always has: the moment an idea becomes tangible.
The first spark. The first touch. The feeling that this could be something new.
Laurie Wiid van Heerden doesn’t chase noise; he builds presence. His work lives in that rare space between innovation and integrity, where originality isn’t a slogan but a standard, and beauty isn’t polished, it’s felt.
In the hum of the machines, in the dust of cork and timber, in the patience of the handmade, Wiid Design reminds us that true originality isn’t about being first. It’s about being honest, again and again, until the work speaks for itself.
Visit Wiid Design
- Address: 15 Baker Street, Observatory, Cape Town (by appointment only)
- Website: wiiddesign.co.za
- Instagram: @wiiddesign
