Brazilian designer and architect Fernando Campana handed away on 16 November 2022, aged 61. His demise was introduced on the studio’s social media channels, prompting a collection of tributes from the worldwide design group.
Fernando was one half of Estudio Campana, which he based together with his brother Humberto in 1984 in Brotas, exterior São Paulo. Collectively, Fernando and Humberto mixed their disruptive design follow with an modern take a look at Brazilian tradition and craft traditions, and an method that merged furniture-making with social outreach.
Wallpaper* July/August 2004, photographed by Tuca Reinés in São Paulo
(Picture credit score: Tuca Reinés)
Engaged on furnishings editions as self-taught designers, the duo has created among the most iconic furnishings items of latest design historical past, usually in collaboration with main manufacturers together with Edra, Louis Vuitton and Cappellini. ‘We do not wish to repeat what others do,’ Fernando instructed Wallpaper* in a 2003 interview. ‘We do not even wish to repeat ourselves.’
Amongst their best-known works is the ‘Favela’ chair from 1991, merely made from wooden strips of various sizes assembled into an archetypal kind, and the ‘Vermelha’ chair from 1998, its seat made from interlaced purple rope impressed by Brazilian weaving strategies – each designs had been put into manufacturing by Italian furnishings firm Edra. ‘[It was] the primary time that designers from South America grew to become main lights within the European design trade,’ reads a tribute from design gallery Friedman Benda, a longtime collaborator of the studio. ‘They always pushed the boundaries of what design could possibly be, and appear like – as of their much-loved chairs “upholstered” in stuffed animals.’
Left, ‘Vermelha’ chair, edited by Edra, 1998. Proper, ‘Cadeira Plástico Bolha’ (‘Bubble Wrap Chair’), 1995
(Picture credit score: © Andreas Heiniger)
In 2020, Museum of Trendy Artwork in Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio) celebrated the studio’s 35 years. Titled ‘Campana Brothers – 35 Revolutions’, the immersive exhibition supplied a panoramic view of the duo’s distinctive method to design, and their revolutionary means of embedding native vernacular, craftsmanship, various factors of view and modern considering into their work.
Amongst their most necessary and long-lasting initiatives is Instituto Campana, based in 2009 to protect the studio’s legacy. Working regionally, the not-for-profit organisation makes use of design as a device for transformation by way of social and academic programmes and partnerships with nationwide and worldwide establishments and each personal and public organisations, and was impressed by the Campanas’ area people. ‘It was the proximity to the totally different realities that gave the preliminary impetus for the creation of an organisation with three fundamental areas of labor: the rescue of artisanal strategies, the event of social inclusion, and the preservation of the brothers’ work for future generations,’ the studio explains.
‘Man’s Finest Buddy’ couch made in collaboration with Kaws
(Picture credit score: Fernando Laszlo)
The tribute from Friedman Benda continues, ‘At no level might one have predicted what the brothers would make subsequent, but it has all the time appeared completely proper, and completely them. With Fernando’s passing, we will solely mirror on how a lot he has given to these round him, to Brazil, and to the entire world of design.’
‘Fernando Campana was a particular particular person. He was particular in something he did. He was particular in something he thought. He had a particular and distinctive way of living: he deeply cherished his work, and collectively together with his brother Humberto, he conceived it as a mission to assist different individuals by way of creativity and enjoyable,’ says Maria Cristina Didero, Wallpaper* Milan editor, curatorial director of Design Miami, and a detailed buddy of the pair. ‘Empathy was his fireplace, and his dream was realised with the Instituto Campana. Together with his contagious smile, Fernando was in a position to form issues, and handle issues in a means that solely he might. The world will miss an excellent soul, a beneficiant particular person, and a very good designer. We had been, and nonetheless are, very shut. I’m deeply lacking a novel particular buddy, whom I thank for each second we spent collectively.’
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Supply: Wallpaper
