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Campana Brothers
When: 06 September, 2004
What: Lecture
The Brazilian brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana have been working together since 1983 in the field of artistic design. Their unique techniques, inspired by the “urban kitsch” of the vibrant city of Sao Paolo, has made them two of the most famous south American designers. This interview is about Brazilian passion, brotherhood and chairs.
by Jonas Joelson & Leonora Sartori / Creative Writing
The Campana Way
What does Sao Paolo give to you in terms of inspiration?
Humberto Sao Paolo has 20 million inhabitants; it’s very big and ugly. However, the beauty of Sao Paolo is its ugliness. If you have eyes you can see things in the city, in the street corners, which “make poetry”. It makes you feel sad and depressed and at the same time it evokes your creativity.
Fernando It’s a vibrant city. I think there is a unique balance between the ugliness and the art, the poverty and the richness. When Olivieri Toscani was there we asked him what he thought of Sao Paolo and he answered: “This is hell and this is paradise, in the same place, in the same moment”.
How does this inspiration influence your work?
Humberto I think we make a portrait of our environment. We are stimulated by the impressions we get. Like here today, for example, we have seen a lot of things and they are now stored inside my brain and something will come out, I don’t know what.
Your latest exhibition is called A Zest for life . However, often passion has a dark side to it - how does this shadow side manifest in your work?
Fernando Me and Humberto translate that darkness into good things.
There is a song that Vinícius de Moraes wrote:
“É melhor ser alegre que ser triste
Alegria é a melhor coisa que existe”
Which means that it’s better to be happy than sad, that happiness is the best thing that exists. This explains a bit how you choose the way or path you want to follow.
Fernando We see a lot of passion in the Brazilian people. In spite of all the poverty, violence and the social and economical disequilibrium, people are still laughing and they dance at the carnival. Now, we don’t deny the poverty and we don’t take advantage of it. We have been working for twenty years and ever since we were kids we have been hearing that Brazil is “The country of the future”, and that future never arrives!
If Brazil is the country of “the future”, like you say, many others would say that you are the designers of “the moment”. What does this mean to you?
Fernando We don’t pay that very much attention. Some say we are the designers of the moment. But what is “moment”? We want to keep our integrity and our ideas. We want to do that which gives us zest for life. Life and design is a circle and we want to make it into a spiral. We always want to be one level further up, when we get back to the first point.
Design as a process of transformation
Your design is a process of transformation; you start from the stuff that people stopped using and develop them into new objects. Tell us about it.
Fernando We try to bring what our culture has best, for the sake of our honesty. We translate our own place, our environment. We use lots of texture. We work in fusions, in hybrids.
But we don’t go around picking up garbage. Many people get this confusion.
Humberto We are not a rich country and we are proud of the poverty – the way that the poor become noble. As Italy has done with Arte Povera. We don’t try to be European, we don’t want to be what we are not – Scandinavian, minimalist, Japanese, Milanese.
In Brazil, many objects in the streets are used in a creative way: someone finds a part of a car and uses it as a door to his house. The process of transformation interests us and we try to investigate it in our work.
Fernando We use industrially produced materials, such as climbing ropes. And then we find new ways to use them, to make a deviation from the original use, like a new function, in order to create a decodification of the material. For example, we have a chair made out of puppets. People see that it is a lot of puppets, but still not, because the composition makes them read the object in another way.
The chairs
Why do you mainly design chairs?
Fernando Chairs? It is the big test for designers; it is the dream of all designers! Tables you can explore, but with chairs you have to take so many aspects into the project: function, beauty, irony, emotion and lightness – physical and visual.
Frankly, are your chairs comfortable?
Humberto Some of them are, and some are not. For instance the Corallo chair was primarily made of iron and without a cushion and it was not very comfortable. I think it’s necessary to be on the edge, to make things that are outside the normal. We are always developing new techniques, and we feel that it is important to work without thinking about sales and comfort.
Fernando We try to reach to point of function, comfort and beauty – all the statements for the projects. But sometimes we are not lucky and brave enough to get there. In many pieces we fail. We don’t draw the pieces, there are no technical drawings - we go straight ahead with building.
The success of brotherhood
You are brothers. How is it to work together, everyday?
Humberto Well, sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s difficult. It is a very close relationship, like a marriage without sex; everything is “put on the table”, we don’t hold anything back.
Fernando Like any other partners we have fights but what is more important is that we are brothers and whenever we fight we don’t have filters, we don’t choose “the good words”, we go straight to hell and then we come up to paradise.
Humberto I try to stimulate him with my ideas. Fernando polishes what I give to him, he is more sophisticated and I am more naïve. I bring the things in a very brutal and raw state, and he polishes. This way, we complete each other.
Would it be correct to say that you have your own special way of doing things? Like a Campana Brothers way of life and design?
Fernando What is important to us is to feel happy with our work, to feel passion. Of course we have demands from companies that we have to please. But whenever people come to us, they know what we do, and they know what is our style, they don’t ask us to make a car or anything like that. And we are fortunate, because our customers respect our ideas and style.
The passion of idealism
What would be the ideal object to design?
Fernando I would like to make a genie in a bottle, which helps you mould your own chairs. And wings for flying, so that people can fly! I love to fly, to me the airplane was the best invention. Computers are nothing compared to airplanes.
And what would the target group be?
Humberto The target group is people with a passion for poetry!
Do you prefer idealism or realism?
Fernando Idealism.
Humberto Reality is so boring! We are idealists. We dream and fly – that is what gives me happiness.
So, what is your ideal?
Fernando To be in the garden, to sit in the sun, to have someone to piss you off! To be in peace.
Humberto To be loved. No, that is too naïve, I mean: to understand love! To understand love, that is my ideal.
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