Design Indaba, a think tank and conference in South Africa founded by Ravi Naidoo, annually brings the brightest and most driven design graduates and professionals to converge in Cape Town for three days of presentations and workshops. It’s a way for keen minds around the world to share their latest work in design, architecture, and science.

At this year’s Design Indaba, one speaker captured the crowd, received multiple standing ovations, and moved people to tears with his design project, a labor of love from Amsterdam to New York to Cape Town, to provide a safe, portable, wearable shelter to the homeless. 

Bas Timmer was a fashion school graduate making winter clothing when in 2014, the homeless father of his friend passed away due to hypothermia. “I was selling clothes, and 500 meters from my small studio, a person died because he didn’t have warm clothes,” Timmer recounted.

Timmer found that at music festivals, festival goers would often leave colorful tents behind. Instead of the tents ending up in the trash, Also he found that the quirky tent fabrics could be upcycled and made into sleeping bags.