The Campana brothers have turned down-cycling into design art
This article was originally published by artinfo.com, an online news and information source for the world of art and culture. artinfo.com is published by Louise Blouin Media.
Any informed design appraisal invariably touches on materials. During much of the 20th century, innovative designs were consistently linked to breakthroughs in material engineering or fabrication. Think of how moulded plywood and fibreglass unleashed the Eameses’ imagination or how injection moulding allowed Verner Panton to create the first single-form, single-material chair. That designers continue to be obsessed with the newest, coolest materials and processes is evident in the proliferation of firms, such as Material Connexion, that advise designers and industry about new materials, and of international fairs that showcase them, like the Dutch Material Xperience.
Against this backdrop, the work of the sibling designers Humberto and Fernando Campana stands startlingly apart. They, too, are obsessed with materials and fabrication, but they are radical by being traditional: They employ common, familiar materials — cardboard, rope, fabric and wood scraps, plastic tubes, aluminium wire — in unexpected ways to create works that add up to much, much more than the sum of their parts. The Vermelha chair, their breakout design and still their best seller, which Edra put into production in 1998 and which costs $9,425, is emblematic of their quirky approach. Made of 492 yards of cotton rope woven, knotted and looped around a metal frame, it was inspired by the piles and spools of rope the brothers saw in one of the many shops that line the side streets of São Paulo, where they live and work. In 1993, when they designed the chair, they had already been collaborating for 10 years, originally on sculptures with a functional dimension that gradually evolved into furniture. |
Alchemy is the term they often use to describe their process of transforming the banal, the discarded and the ignored into objects of beauty and value. In fact, turning discarded goods into something different is common in countries with large impoverished populations. A word has even emerged to describe this inspired reuse: gambiarra. These acts of improvisation run parallel to the country’s strong tradition of handcrafts, and both are essential to the Campanas’ design mind-set.
To make an early work, the 1999 Tatoo table, produced by Fontana Arte, for example, they arranged plastic drain grills into an attractive grid — an easy way to create a perforated plastic tabletop without complicated tooling. And they are currently experimenting with translucent plastic jugs, stacked and woven together with apuí, a natural fibre extracted from vines that suffocate trees in the Brazilian jungle, to serve as elegant torchères. This is another instance where they have bypassed costly processes like injection moulding, simultaneously avoiding the waste associated with new-material creation and reviving craft techniques like wicker braiding.
Taking advantage of Brazil’s large and affordable pool of skilled manual workers, the brothers have installed a workshop on the ground floor of their studio that serves as both a testing ground for new concepts and a mini factory. The latter makes and sells works that are not licensed to their long time partner Edra or other clients, who include Alessi and Fontana Arte. Under the rubric of Estúdio Campana, a half-dozen artisans sew handmade folkloric Esperança dolls or plush stuffed animals into cartoonish chaises or weave apuí through and around cheap plastic café chairs to create marketable versions of the TransPlastic collection exhibited at London’s Albion Gallery in 2007. (A version of the Albion installation was on show at Design Miami/2008, which honoured the brothers with its Designer of the Year award.)
Incredibly, just a decade ago, the Campanas were relatively unknown. They first appeared on the media radar in 1998, when the Museum of Modern Art design curator Paola Antonelli gave them a show with the equally improvisational and affecting German lighting designer Ingo Maurer. At the time, the Campanas’ work seemed especially odd and idiosyncratic. Antonelli even commented on how frequently it was described as "primitive" and "indigenous." Since that watershed show, they’ve gone on to be honoured guests and participants at every major design fair, from Milan’s Salone del Mobile to New York’s ICFF, and their work has been featured in some of the world’s most important design museums, from New York’s Cooper-Hewitt to the Victoria & Albert, in London. |
ARTINFO.com offers breaking news, profiles of top and emerging artists, stories about collectors and collecting, gallery round-ups from around the world, the best of student art, market trends and analysis, and detailed coverage of art fairs.
More articles in Focus on: art and design
Design & art advisory service
HSBC Private Bank can offer you access to a global network of art and design experts to suit your needs. Find out more about our specialist design and art advisory service.
