Cavendish Square has just finished upgrading its escalators – they are now extra energy efficient and therefore more ‘green’ than ever before. Working with local design group The Green Elephant Collective, Cavendish was decorated with great recycled and eco-friendly installation artworks during renovations in order to distract and entertain visitors to the mall.
One of the few shopping centres in Cape Town making efforts to decrease their negative environmental impact, Cavendish Square saves between 20-25% of electricity per year through various energy-saving initiatives, such as using natural daylight in their parking lots, employing timers on all lighting devices and replacing all their exterior lights for LED. With projects like an onsite warm farm to process the malls compost, Cavendish have also been able to drastically reduce their contribution to landfill sites. Attempts have also been made to save on water consumption.
The Green Elephant Collective – a group of local designers who work to embrace a responsibility towards our natural environment – teamed with Cavendish to ease potential discomfort to shoppers during the recent escalator renovations. Having chosen the theme ‘Lifted’, the colour yellow and images of birds were incorporated into the artworks to lend the mall an atmosphere of light-heartedness. Innovative designs created from the likes of string, old books, cooldrink cans, plastic bottles and even living plants could be seen decorating the walls or hanging from the ceiling.
Designers included Heath Nash, voted Elle Decoration (lighting) designer in 2005/6, Isabeau Joubert, Cape Town’s own yarn bomb queen and paper wizard extraordinaire Keri Muller, with creative direction by Lizanne Visser. Local schools were also involved thanks to the organisational skills of Planet Productions and well-known mural artist Mak1One even made a brief appearance!
‘For the coming months, Green Elephant Collective hopes to further expand on the existing range of green designed lifestyle products available through the online store,’ says Ute Faure, founder of The Green Elephant Initiative and self-proclaimed green ninja. ‘We want also to push sales for those designers that are part of the collective through pop-up shops, intimate workshops and targeted media-based marketing initiatives.’
Watch this space!
Be sure to check out The Green Elephant Collective’s awesome online store.
