We design hardware that uses less, wastes less, and keeps working. Bara is a circular product development studio with offices in Cape Town and London — combining industrial design, production automation, and consultancy for founders and operators building things that matter.
A studio that ships its own work.
Each venture is a vehicle for material, machine, or process research that comes out of the studio.
Compressed straw building panels, made by a heat-and-compression rig that fits inside a shipping container. Carbon-negative, fire-resistant, and made at the farm gate.
Modular off-grid homes built from Bara Boards. Stack One ships in weeks at a fraction of conventional construction’s carbon cost.
Plastic-waste reclamation. Local-scale machines that turn post-consumer plastic into structural blocks and street furniture.
Spent coffee grounds, reformed into reusable cups and small homewares. A second life for a waste stream every café in the country produces.
Four practices, one studio.
We engage on any of them — or all of them, if that’s what the work needs.
From sketch to manufacturable hardware. Engineering, prototyping, and supply chain held to a circular standard from day one.
Form, function, and material reasoning for products that earn their place — in someone’s home, vehicle, or factory floor.
Tooling and assembly systems that scale production without scaling waste — designed alongside the product itself.
Strategic engagements for founders and operators on circular roadmaps, material selection, and operations.
Bara works with founders and operators across Southern Africa — turning resource-constrained briefs into manufacturable, repairable, distinctive products.
We hold engineering, industrial design, and production automation in equal measure — circular doesn’t work if any one of them is an afterthought. The studio runs as both a lab (shipping its own ventures) and a partner (engaging on selected client work).
At Bara we are working in the construction industry through our commitment to sustainability. By transforming agricultural waste into high-performance building materials at our Western Cape facility, we are setting new standards for eco-friendly innovation across Africa.
Studio at a glance
A small studio with a large output.
4
Ventures shipping or in pilot
7
Engineers, designers and operators
−1,657 t
CO₂e captured per machine, per year
94,320
20 mm panels per machine, per year
Team
Engineers, designers, and operators.
Ash
Executive Director & Co-founder
Hamilton
PrEng Mechanical Engineer & Co-founder
Cuan
BSc Mechatronics — Project Engineer
Matthew
BSc Eng — Mechanical Engineer
Garth
Industrial Product Designer
Israel
Director of Partnerships
Damon
Business Development
Working with Bara
Most first-call questions, in one place. If yours isn’t covered, the team is one message away.
Briefs, requests for proposal, and letters of intent welcome. We take on a small number of partner engagements per year.
Locations