Getting To Know The Campanas

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.

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.

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.

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.