DESIGN IN SEARCH OF SOLUTIONS At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdown regulations presented an existential crisis for many restaurant businesses. As regulations eased, Clout/SA looked to designers in its quest to come up with answers to the unexpected problem of social distancing TEXT MALIBONGWE TYILO PHOTOGRAPHS BLAKE WOODHAM
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eyond affecting the individual and limiting our movements, our daily actions and interactions, the Covid-19 pandemic presented a challenge for businesses across the board, including the many designermakers we have celebrated, worked with, and supported. It was with this and other challenges in mind that Nando’s Design Programme creative director Tracy Lee Lynch started work on a series of screens and furniture accessories that would not only make social distancing more intuitive, but also an enriching aesthetic experience. While take-outs and delivery services offered one kind of solution, the reality was that even as regulations loosened up, people still wanted to visit restaurants to sit down for the familiar social experience. “People were craving those kinds of experiences. So we had to look at how we could make social distancing stand the test of time, and make sure that whatever we did reflected the Nando’s experience,” Tracy says. “We spend so much energy and resources on designing these
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