Decorex Joburg Designer of the Year

Decorex Joburg Designer of the Year Charles O Job

Meet the man who turned design’s fundamental challenge into a mic-drop moment

Meet global heavyweight Charles O Job, the award-winning architect and designer who is Decorex Joburg Designer of the Year 2025. He’s best known for his sustainable innovations that address design's most fundamental challenge: how to make beautiful furniture that doesn't cost the earth to produce or transport.

It’s all about upcycling and sustainability, trends he believes are really 'a call for the creative community to think back to how things used to be made’. 'Sustainability is what we used to practise when, as children, we would collect locally found materials and transform them into objects of desire,' says Job, recalling his early years growing up in Lagos, Nigeria. 'Now it’s called upcycling. We must have been ahead of the curve!'

He points out that sustainable homes used to be built with local materials, employing local skills that were passed down through generations of local makers, and that sustainable appliances were designed to be repaired and broken parts easily replaced. It's this kind of refreshing honesty that makes him feel less like a distant design guru and more like the friend who has your best interests at heart.

Job’s story reads like proof that talent can be developed by paying attention to the world around you. His journey took him from Lagos to London, Paris and eventually Switzerland, where he now lives, in Zurich. 'They say that travelling expands the mind. It also sharpens focus,' he reflects. 'Good design is universal. What is simple and innovative will remain so in London, Paris or Lagos.'

His approach is unconventional: he doesn't wait for clients to tell him what to design; instead, he enters international competitions, treating each brief like a personal research project. 'I walk through the world with open eyes, a sketch book and the camera of my mobile phone,' he says. 'Good design can’t happen in a bubble.'

This results in chairs that tell stories, like the ones in the permanent collection of the Vitra Design Museum in Germany and the Denver Art Museum in the USA, or those shown at the Dakar Design Biennale in Senegal, where he represented Nigeria, or the ones destined for David Adjaye's Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City. And right now, some of his stellar seats are headed for Decorex Joburg.

For the show, Job is creating an island installation where large-format images of his chairs create an immersive experience in what he’s calling ‘a visual and permeable border'. Design sketches reveal 'the role of drawing and observation’ in his process, in a bid to show how ideas transform into objects that change how we live.

Job will also be giving a keynote presentation on the Future Talks stage. His 'Body of Work' talk promises to be less lecture, more revelation wrapped in conversation. Expect stories that connect childhood wonder to Swiss precision, Nigerian creativity to global impact.

He's particularly drawn to South Africa's design scene and 'the mix of the artisanal with the industrial'. He references Brazil's Campana brothers, Brazilian furniture designers and artists known for their innovative and often playful pieces who gained global recognition for their work exploring the intersection of design, art and everyday materials, as proof that this fusion can 'hold its own on the international design stage’.

Job’s advice to emerging African designers applies to anyone trying to create something authentic: 'Tread your own path. Find your own language. Don't just design for Africa. It’s a culture trap. Liberate yourself. Design for the world!'