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Spacial Magazine

Getting To Know The Campanas

By: Stephan Hamel Photo: Humberto and Fernando Campana
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He began the phe­nom­e­non known as the Cam­pana Broth­ers. Stephan Hamel searched the list of tele­phone num­bers for the name Cam­pana at a time when the world knew noth­ing of them. A quar­ter cen­tu­ry lat­er, he ques­tions Hum­ber­to and Fer­nan­do in an open inter­view, exclu­sive­ly accom­pa­nied by snip­pets from their diaries. Get to know them up-close and personal!

My first acquain­tance with the Cam­pana broth­ers took place in the late 1990s. At the time, I was in close con­tact with Mas­si­mo Morozzi, founder of Archizoom and a great mas­ter of pro­por­tions. It was in 1997 that he men­tioned he had seen some­thing spe­cial done by two young Brazil­ian design­ers. I began to look in the Sao Paulo phone­book and found eight dif­fer­ent phone num­bers for Cam­pana. The third one was cor­rect and with Fer­nan­do Cam­pana on the line, it was like win­ning the lot­tery. The broth­ers came to Italy to devel­op the pro­to­types of a lat­er icon, known as the Ver­mel­ha chair. We had a great time from the first moment.

Mas­si­mo Morozzi was like a father to them. He intro­duced the Cam­panas to the design scene with­out the pre­tense of mak­ing them a star. Mas­si­mo was sim­ple, hum­ble and essen­tial and he was able to adjust their Brazil­ian baroque atti­tude as need­ed. The result was some extra­or­di­nary pieces that found their imme­di­ate way into the most impor­tant col­lec­tions. The very first was the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in 1998. After the pre­sen­ta­tion in Milan at the fair in April, Pao­la Antonel­li her­self decid­ed to invite them for a show at the MoMA in New York in Novem­ber, togeth­er with Ingo Mau­r­er. It was a dream com­ing true!

The streets of Sao Paulo like Aveni­da 25 Mayo, with all their small shops and thou­sands of street ven­dors were part of the Campana’s inspi­ra­tion. Humberto’s and Fernando’s father was an agron­o­mist and they always relat­ed to plants and organ­i­cal­ly struc­tured sur­faces. Hum­ber­to had always been more mod­er­at­ed and Fer­nan­do more extreme. I remem­ber vis­it­ing fave­las with Fer­nan­do and his authen­ti­cal­ly direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion with peo­ple. On the oth­er hand, Hum­ber­to col­lects infor­ma­tion with immense patience and makes it vis­i­ble. In their pro­ce­dure, you find the same mul­ti­eth­nic mix­ture inspired by Brazil­ian as well as Ital­ian music, thanks to their part­ly Ital­ian origin.

Bro­tas, the city they come from, is a near­ly Ital­ian city, with fam­i­lies from Fer­rara, Luc­ca and Rovi­go. It is like step­ping into a neo­re­al­ist film, where nobody speaks Ital­ian, but behaves Ital­ian. This small city had a cin­e­ma where Ital­ian films where per­formed. While in Italy, Teo­re­ma by Pier­pao­lo Pasoli­ni was pro­hib­it­ed, but they saw it at a young age more than ten times. This is extreme­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, because a strong sense of poet­ry and crit­i­cal vision was also giv­en by their nan­ny Alice, who is an angel for them. The Cam­pana method of oper­a­tion is always through sen­si­tive research that is near­ly as eso­teric as Brazil itself.

It is great to have seen the Cam­panas grow over the years, espe­cial­ly because Hum­ber­to orig­i­nal­ly want­ed to become an Indios, since he stud­ied law, but he real­ized that it was not his skill. Fer­nan­do was cer­tain about his career as an astro­naut, but stud­ied archi­tec­ture and began to work at the Mod­ern Art Muse­um in Sao Pao­lo. When they were kids, Oscar Niemey­er was build­ing Brasília, the cap­i­tal. Once they grew up, they met him for an inter­view and he asked them what they real­ly want­ed to do. The Cam­panas want­ed to reflect their world. Spread the mes­sage of being what they are: Brazil­ian. Through them I learned the impor­tant mes­sage of being region­al bet­ter than glob­al, which through the art direc­tor Max­im Velčovský infil­trat­ed Lasvit with great success.

Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
“Like aliens with human shape, Flix and Flex orig­i­nal­ly came down from space and their sur­face is their skin. Unlike astro­nauts, they don‘t have a pro­tec­tive lay­er between them­selves and the out­side envi­ro­ment. The Out­er Space Mon­sters might be every­where – some­times we are not sure if they are real or just hal­lu­ci­na­tions.” Thus the design­ers describe the nature of their Flix and Flex stat­uettes from the Mon­sters Col­lec­tion for Lasvit from 2018.

My dear Cam­panas, tell me, what was your orig­i­nal moti­va­tion to start with design and what is it now? Which role should design play in today’s society?

Fer­nan­do Cam­pana: I think the first light­ning bolt in my life was when my par­ents moved to Brasil­ia. It was a dream. I stud­ied archi­tec­ture in Sao Pao­lo and I also had an intern­ship at the 17th bien­nale of Sao Pao­lo, which gave me a bal­ance of both art and prac­tice. Today I can see the impor­tance of the 70s and 80s in my life, it stim­u­lat­ed my imag­i­na­tion and brought me to design. At the same time, I learned a lot about plan­ning a project. Design today is going fur­ther because we have a lot of envi­ron­men­tal and social issues, main­ly here in Brazil and design can be a tool to trans­form peo­ple, their homes and lives…

Hum­ber­to Cam­pana: I am a case out of the box. Orig­i­nal­ly, I was about to grad­u­ate in law, but I gave up to become a sculp­tor. I want­ed to con­struct my life with my own hands and things sud­den­ly began hap­pen­ing. I did not choose to become a design­er, the design dis­ci­pline came to me. Fer­nan­do, as an archi­tect, pro­vid­ed func­tion­al­i­ty to my sculp­tures. And slow­ly we began to be dis­cov­ered in Italy by Mas­si­mo Morozzi, Mar­co Romanel­li and Pao­la Antonel­li. It hap­pened with­out any inten­tion. I think the role of design today is that it can be a very strong polit­i­cal tool that changes people’s lives – when it uses the cor­rect mate­ri­als, the right meth­ods of pro­duc­tion, reap­plies dis­ap­pear­ing tra­di­tions and brings self-esteem to poor com­mu­ni­ties using their hands. Design is impor­tant because it is part of people’s homes and you can send strong mes­sages through your objects.

Fer­nan­do, you and Hum­ber­to start­ed in the 80s, in 1998 you had an inter­na­tion­al break­through. But already at the very begin­ning you began look­ing at social aspects com­ing out of the Brazil­ian soci­ety. Can you elab­o­rate more on that?

Fer­nan­do: It hap­pened by chance. We didn’t have the guts to go to a big com­pa­ny and present our projects based on hand­i­craft. Instead, we began con­tact­ing small pro­duc­ers – crafts­men who taught us the basics of pro­duc­tion tech­niques. Here in Brazil we have a long tra­di­tion of hand­i­craft com­ing from the indige­nous peo­ple and the Por­tuguese. The turn­ing point was when Ital­ians came to Brazil in the 19th cen­tu­ry. It was a real rev­o­lu­tion, not only in terms of man­u­fac­tur­ing, but also in art. In Brazil and Africa there is an increas­ing need to embrace the tra­di­tion of hand­i­craft, which is slow­ly dis­ap­pear­ing. In Europe you already had the boom of mass-pro­duced fur­ni­ture and now you are com­ing back to more con­scious pro­duc­tion. In Brazil, the indus­try is expand­ing these days and peo­ple are for­get­ting the hand­i­crafts. With­out being immod­est, me and Hum­ber­to are some of the few who want to save it.

Hum­ber­to, your projects often work with very local top­ics relat­ed to a spe­cif­ic social issue. How can you trans­form these top­ics into an aes­thet­ic object attract­ing glob­al attention?

Hum­ber­to: I trav­el a lot and I try to cre­ate sto­ries and images of the places that I vis­it, includ­ing the emo­tions I feel. An artist should have the poten­tial to see what passers­by can­not see. Our main chal­lenge with Fer­nan­do is to trans­form those banal­i­ties into new dia­logues. I like this process of trans­form­ing some­thing rather ordi­nary at first sight. And to re-sig­ni­fy – give a new mean­ing to already exist­ing things, pro­fes­sions, tech­niques. Since the begin­ning, Fer­nan­do and I have been used to chang­ing the DNA of some­thing very poor and trans­form­ing it into rich and opu­lent objects.

Fer­nan­do: It is a kind of part­ner­ship. We want to cre­ate a bridge between the Instituto/Studio Cam­pana and small com­mu­ni­ties or sin­gle crafts­men. We have a par­tial aes­thet­ic intru­sion into the project and we let them teach us how to adopt a dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy, a low-tech approach in our aes­thet­ic. I think this is a two-way street.

Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The sap­phire blue stat­ue of Flix illus­trates the idea of the Cam­pana broth­ers about ​‘Out­er Space Mon­sters’. “Our mon­sters are like aliens with a human shape inside. They are not ugly or ter­ri­fy­ing. We see more hor­ri­ble things in dai­ly life,” says Fer­nan­do Campana.

You are exten­sive­ly work­ing with hum­ble, upcy­cled mate­ri­als such as bam­boo, coconut fibers, pirarucu’s leather or wick­er and putting them into new con­texts or unusu­al com­bi­na­tions. Do you have some favorite materials?

Fer­nan­do: There are many mate­ri­als I like! Some­thing might draw my atten­tion and I go for it, draw it and see it as a video. With pens, pen­cils and water­col­ors, I can see my cre­ation being trans­formed into real­i­ty. Hum­ber­to fol­lows more the pro­duc­tion side, which he intro­duced me to. And I intro­duced him to the tech­niques, social and func­tion­al solu­tions. In oth­er words, Hum­ber­to makes the cake and I put the cher­ry on top.

Hum­ber­to: For me it is very impor­tant to work with mate­ri­als that do not cause too much dam­age to the envi­ron­ment. My main con­cern is to be polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect, which is indeed dif­fi­cult. I am very inter­est­ed in work­ing with nat­ur­al fibers like bam­boo and I am also work­ing with ter­ra­cot­ta. Every week I vis­it a place in Bro­tas where they make ter­ra­cot­ta vas­es. I come and make tables, box­es and chairs instead. I have always been inter­est­ed in clay but I had to mature to be able to achieve good results with some­thing that is nor­mal­ly just used for vas­es. Peo­ple there give me free­dom and space to bring new ideas and tech­niques. It’s great fun!

What do you like the most about the Czech tra­di­tion­al tech­niques? I know you are big fans of glass!

Hum­ber­to: I like the Czech tra­di­tions very much. When I began as a design­er in the 80s I was a big fan of Bořek Šípek, because of the fan­tas­tic way he uses glass. When I got an invi­ta­tion to work with Lasvit, I felt very blessed to be part of this com­pa­ny with a great his­to­ry that brings moder­ni­ty to the tra­di­tion­al glass tech­nique in the Czech Republic.

Fer­nan­do: We knew the glass that our grand­par­ents brought from Europe, from Czecho­slo­va­kia and also from Mura­no. That was mag­i­cal. So many lay­ers and col­ors. It was so del­i­cate. Our rela­tion­ship with tra­di­tion­al crafts­men is also a social les­son: how they live, what their needs are and how they solve var­i­ous issues. We can bring this to the mass­es or make some­thing spe­cial. In a way, we make transits.

Your Can­dy col­lec­tion which you designed for Lasvit five years ago is also full of col­ors. What was the main inspi­ra­tion behind that?

Fer­nan­do: The inspi­ra­tion comes from our child­hood and vis­its to glass fac­to­ries in Venice. We were also invit­ed to see the pro­duc­tion of Lasvit and sud­den­ly it was pos­si­ble to use a wide range of col­ors and trans­form our child­hood images of can­dies and car­ni­vals in Brazil. Our whole life is col­or­ful, we can­not be black, white or red. It is an inter­sec­tion of col­ors. Now in the sum­mer, green is the most intense, bright and flu­o­res­cent col­or with spots of white, magen­ta, yel­low. Look­ing at the city from my ter­race, peo­ple are also col­or­ful with dif­fer­ent skin types and hair. There is an abun­dance of col­or that we fol­low in our objects. And hav­ing free­dom of col­or was the best thing about work­ing with Lasvit.

On the oth­er, hand there is also the Fun­go chan­de­lier made for Lasvit, which is very min­i­mal­is­tic and sim­ple. Based on the con­trast of free and firm forms. A work inspired by nat­ur­al process­es of grow­ing mush­rooms on a piece of wood. Are you fas­ci­nat­ed by these process­es in your work?

Hum­ber­to: Things hap­pened quite unex­pect­ed­ly. At the begin­ning of my work for Lasvit, I was think­ing about the sushi inspi­ra­tion. Once it was fin­ished, Max­im Velčovský invit­ed me to vis­it the fac­to­ry, where I saw a lot of old wood forms and sud­den­ly there was a mush­room / fun­gi. So on the way to the air­port I made a draw­ing which I sent to Max­im and asked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty to cre­ate a chan­de­lier and things began mov­ing. Being there with peo­ple like Max­im and the fac­to­ry employ­ees gave me the inspi­ra­tion to bring my best. I love that Fun­go chan­de­lier, for me it is one of the best pieces that I ever made. First­ly because it mix­es two mate­ri­als – wood and glass – and sec­ond­ly for the way it hap­pens. It was pure magic!

Your projects are fre­quent­ly addressed to peo­ple who can afford afflu­ence. What does it mean for you per­son­al­ly? In your view, how has the idea of “lux­u­ry” been chang­ing over time?

Hum­ber­to: Lux­u­ry for me now is to think about the oth­ers. The pan­dem­ic showed every­body that we are all in the same boat. We need to be hum­ble and help each oth­er. Lux­u­ry today means col­lec­tiv­i­ty and work­ing with sim­ple mate­ri­als that do no harm to the plan­et. It is not about going to a lux­u­ry spa but about hav­ing expe­ri­ences. For me it is much more about going to work with a com­mu­ni­ty where I can bring new good vibes and not to be bored in Capri.

Fer­nan­do: Of course, a great part of the pop­u­la­tion is very rich. But we can­not for­get the ones liv­ing in pover­ty. When­ev­er we do a work­shop in a favela or for crafts­men we cre­ate a bridge and point them to dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties of cre­ation. The con­tri­bu­tion we make is show­ing them how to work with their poten­tial. The prod­uct must have a price to sim­ply express that it has a val­ue. I don’t own a lot myself, but I can live very well with it. I feel com­fort­able here, hav­ing all the means to work and com­mu­ni­cate with the world.

Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The Fun­go chan­de­lier was inspired by the fas­ci­nat­ing shape of a mush­room grow­ing on wood. The Cam­pana broth­ers chose to blend the nat­ur­al process with Lasvit’s glass­mak­ing tra­di­tion. The result dis­plays a strik­ing con­trast between the for­mal rigid­i­ty of the chandelier’s wood­en struc­ture and the blown-glass that appears to emerge spon­ta­neous­ly from the wood.

Over the last two years our spaces rad­i­cal­ly min­i­mized trav­el­ing around the globe, meet­ing with the design com­mu­ni­ty and chang­ing con­texts to more pri­vate ones. How did you deal with such a change? Do you already see the impacts of the pan­dem­ic reflect­ed in your work?

Hum­ber­to: I want to do the same things that I always did – work­ing with com­mu­ni­ties, pro­mot­ing crafts to the lev­el of design, res­cu­ing tra­di­tions, going much more into the crafts process than the indus­tri­al­ized pro­duc­tion. The world does not need a new chair. I think if you bring a new chair or an object, it needs to tell a per­son­al his­to­ry of where it comes from, whether it helped a com­mu­ni­ty, for instance. Today it is vital to think about the plan­et, the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, the mate­ri­als, the process of appro­pri­a­tion etc. This pan­dem­ic is remind­ing us to slow down. We don’t need to get a jet to go to Italy to see a project, we can do it over Zoom or Skype. Slow every­thing down. That’s men­tal­ly healthy.

Can you tell us about your vision for the Insti­tu­to Cam­pana, where you worked with peo­ple from hand­i­crafts com­mu­ni­ties? How did the pan­dem­ic sit­u­a­tion influ­ence this aspect of your research?

Fer­nan­do: Because of the pan­dem­ic, we had to cut our vis­its to fave­las in Sao Pao­lo for instance, the biggest “fac­to­ry of crack”. It is not specif­i­cal­ly for drug addicts, but we know that some mem­bers of the fam­i­lies there have such prob­lems. This is a prob­lem world­wide. It is impor­tant to have in mind what we can give them and what their pos­si­bil­i­ties are to adopt our ideas. We need to be care­ful and con­sid­er­ate in order to arrive at a very sol­id solu­tion for those communities.

Hum­ber­to: Before the pan­dem­ic, the Insti­tu­to was doing very well work­ing with dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties of the fave­las – with favela kids we orga­nized work­shops, took them to movies, the­atres, exhi­bi­tions… Today we are work­ing only with one com­mu­ni­ty in Piraci­ca­ba. The guys there pro­duce fruit bowls made out of bricks thanks to a brick fac­to­ry near­by. I go there and chal­lenge them: see, bricks con­struct hous­es, so you can con­struct your own life work­ing with this. We buy the bricks for them, sell the prod­ucts in shops in Sao Pao­lo and give the mon­ey back to the com­mu­ni­ty. I hope when this pan­dem­ic is over that we can start work­ing again with the kids from the fave­las and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. There is a plan to go to the Ama­zon to work with a com­mu­ni­ty of weavers. This is all on stand­by right now.

What does pri­va­cy mean to you nowadays?

Fer­nan­do: There is my own men­tal and social pri­va­cy. It is also impor­tant to appear at social events to cre­ate con­nec­tions, learn and con­tribute. But at the end of the day, I want to go home and stay in my gar­den and orga­nize my per­son­al life. Because if we do not orga­nize our­selves, who is going to take care of this? We need to be more focused and centered.

Hum­ber­to: I have pri­va­cy when­ev­er I have an idea in mind. I am very com­fort­able when I cre­ate, be it in the mid­dle of a crowd or in a movie the­atre. My mind stays in my own zone of com­fort and noth­ing can dis­turb me, no bad ener­gy can get inside. Hence pri­va­cy for me is to be cre­ative, to have a good idea that safe­ly main­tains my equilibrium.

How do you see your work devel­op­ing? Do you think you will keep cre­at­ing new fur­ni­ture, new design objects?

Hum­ber­to: I like design a lot because it makes me a human being. After 35 years with so many expe­ri­ences in pho­tog­ra­phy, fash­ion, gar­den­ing, design and art, I love to cross bridges and not get stuck in just one box – design­er or artist. At the moment, for exam­ple, I am doing a project with cur­tains, in which I try to insert a poet­ic nar­ra­tive. Also I am cre­at­ing a botan­i­cal park where we mix art and design with biol­o­gy. It will open next year in Bro­tas, my home­town, where I came into this world in order to give beau­ty and hope, show that peo­ple can change their lives.

 


Estu­dio Cam­pana was found­ed in 1983 in Sao Pao­lo by broth­ers Fer­nan­do and Hum­ber­to Cam­pana. It became famous for its fur­ni­ture design and the cre­ation of intrigu­ing objects, such as the Ver­mel­ha and Favela chairs. From there, their port­fo­lio has grown to include inte­ri­or design, archi­tec­ture, land­scap­ing, scenog­ra­phy, fash­ion, artis­tic part­ner­ships and more. The Cam­panas’ work incor­po­rates the idea of trans­for­ma­tion, rein­ven­tion and the inte­gra­tion of crafts­man­ship into mass pro­duc­tion. Giv­ing radi­ance to com­mon mate­ri­als, they show great cre­ativ­i­ty in their designs, but also stay in touch with their Brazil­ian roots – the col­ors, the com­bi­na­tions, the cre­ative chaos, the tri­umph of sim­ple solu­tions. Since 2016, they’ve been part of the Lasvit fam­i­ly, for which they’ve designed Can­dy and Fun­gus light­ing col­lec­tions and two sculp­tures of Out­er Space Monsters.

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Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
“Like aliens with human shape, Flix and Flex originally came down from space and their surface is their skin. Unlike astronauts, they don`t have a protective layer between themselves and the outside enviroment. The Outer Space Monsters might be everywhere – sometimes we are not sure if they are real or just hallucinations.” Thus the designers describe the nature of their Flix and Flex statuettes from the Monsters Collection for Lasvit from 2018.
Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The sapphire blue statue of Flix illustrates the idea of the Campana brothers about ​‘Outer Space Monsters’. “Our monsters are like aliens with a human shape inside. They are not ugly or terrifying. We see more horrible things in daily life,” says Fernando Campana.
Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
The Fungo chandelier was inspired by the fascinating shape of a mushroom growing on wood. The Campana brothers chose to blend the natural process with Lasvit’s glassmaking tradition. The result displays a striking contrast between the formal rigidity of the chandelier’s wooden structure and the blown-glass that appears to emerge spontaneously from the wood.
Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine
Campana Brothers - Lasvit - Spacial Magazine

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Candy lighting collection by Campana Brothers

Candy home & décor collection by Campana Brothers

Making of Candy Collection (video)

Fungo collection by Campana Brothers

Outer Space Monster Collection by Campana Brothers

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