Campana Brothers

Campana Brothers

The Campana brothers didn’t plan to become designers but life led them towards that direction. Humberto, the older brother, was born in 1953 around Sau Paulo, Brazil and studied law. His brother Fernando, born in 1961 in Brotas, Brazil, graduated from architecture school and the two started designing furniture together. The brothers have worked together in Sau Paulo, Brazil since 1983 and define their profession as artistic design. They both posses a radical point of view and insist on creating Brazilian clean designs that strays as far as possible from the influences of European colonialism. In their designs, they reflect on daily events and draw inspiration from the street life in Brazil and the Brazilian carnival culture and utilize unexpected combination of reusable waste – they combine in their works items that were tossed away such as fabrics and wood and use advanced technology to embed it in their designs. Their use of low-grade materials and industrial waste while embedding it with hand-made items is a social statement. Nowadays, the Campana brothers are part of a group of International designers leading a new chapter in design history. The brothers view their role as broadcasters for design information and ideas and teach many seminars for young designers around the world. The materials they use to create their designs are a major factor in their work. They see a challenge in converting a worthless, thrown-away pieces into a rich, exciting items or in their words: “Doing so takes an organic idea someone else started and giving it continuity and the opposite. We’ve always said we’re all about material first and shape later. We add the role of the product later, while researching its agronomy, its capabilities, and its limitations. The streets of Sau Paulo are a lab for our designs.”