These are just a few photos of things that are inspiring us here, to give you all a sense of what some of the environment feels like.
Suame Magazine
We visited Suame Magazine over the weekend, a massive area housing some 200,000 artisan engineers hard at work. The majority of the manufacturing center seems to be focused on auto repair and aftermarket fabrication, but there are a lot of special little places doing their own sand-casting and custom machining. Really inspiring for us as designers.
SMIDO is an organization working to unify and develop the offering of the many small shops here, and plans to introduce safety standards (badly needed). http://www.smidoghana.org/about.html
These rolling carts (in the background) are all over the city, and are incredibly simple and well built. You see many loaded with hundreds of pounds of goods or materials lumbering down the narrow aisles of Central Market.
Rebar
Rebar is used in so many ways here, from this crowbar and tail light guard above to the grills of the cooking stove below.
Sign Painting
We’ve also been impressed by the beautiful painted signs advertising businesses around Kumasi. The best are probably the barber shops, check out the Tupac one.
Not just a barber, a barber with a toilet.
Yes We Can (become consumers) Shop.
Tiles
Tiles are extremely popular, and this broken tile pattern is in almost every washroom.
and…Cheap Plastic.
Cheap plastic products are ubiquitous in Ghana. These somewhat beautiful plastic teapots sell for about $0.20 US each.
That’s all for now, we’ll post some more shots from this rich environment soon.
- the Ghanasan team
Very cool. Find out where they are made. Does it say on the bottom?
We thought they were definitely made in China, but it turns out they’re local – made in Ghana!
I hope you don’t try to make tea with these pots. They are meant to use to rinse your bottom (instead of toilet paper).
Aii, this is AfriGadget material!