WHY THEY ALLOW THEMSELVES...

To roll-up cloths, invent knots, place paper strips and paints in the medium which will be used to form the OSB panels, translate shanty towns, use unthought-of materials - from coconut shavings to jabuticabeira tree branches and to waste material of any type - to experiment with textures, accept the resulting forms, always reinventing objects ...

Maria Helena Estrada

I thought, not of the designers, but the persons – Fernando and Humberto – when the figure of Castiglioni, the remembrance of Achille Castiglioni, resurrected in the pages of Domus, united them, almost without wanting, in a single image. Absurd?
With all respect for what the Italian master represents – and conscious of the broad differences and –, some “fads”, some inspirational roots, reading the comments on Castiglioni began to reinforce this unusual association.
The differences? Innumerable and fundamental: of time, of place, of culture, of projects' results. “You can not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you" is a true saying as old as Heraclitus.
But there is the same drive, an anima operandi, this same river... which identifies them.
In the way of playing, for example, with the most serious subjects when they go on to the stage. Castiglioni came to São Paulo and assembled close to 1000 people, on two successive occasions. He was a charismatic child on stage, playing with his objects: his conferences were a spectacle, like the entertaining and unrehearsed troubadour’s show which we see at presentations by the Campana brothers.
Like Castiglioni, who collected objects found by chance, Fernando and Humberto are attracted by everyday objects and materials which, in one form or another, are seeds of inspiration. In both cases - and this is the most important - looking at the object is to perceive the soul behind the outline. “Achille always projected affection and intelligence”, is a quotation from Italo Lupi.
But these are mere digressions.
Castiglioni created objects which, because they were so logical and essential, seemed obvious to us. The Campana are tropical, one sees the exuberance in their creation, the good Baroque which transcends the Brazilian creative spirit.
“... the work of Fernando and Humberto helps us to delineate a possible scenario for the future arena of world design, which really should, for the first time, be able to coexist with the instantaneous transmission of information, with iconic knowledge in real-time, although preserving each individual people's expression and poetic strength. Such that the maximum particularity (of creativity) will be joined with a maximum internationality (of interchange, of information, or fraternity). Only the world can be enriched by works, avoiding the incorrect and suicidal aesthetic of plagiarism. Only by means of designing the difference is it possible to arrive at the real and balanced democracy of the project”, wrote Marco Romanelli in an article published in the magazine Domus, of February 1994: “Fernando and Humberto Campana: Projects between 1991 and 1994”.
After ten years, the work “by Campana” fulfils these predictions. A new semantic arises with their objects, which today influences the directions of design in various corners of the world.
And when we hear Castiglioni in one of his few axioms on design, state that “the designer's objective is not to create an ideology, but communicate messages of curiosity, entertainment and affection", it appears that we are looking at a Galho vase, in which the glass melts over the jabuticabeira branch , at the California Rolls chairs, or at all the freedom of the various Sushi.
The pieces which illustrate this article – with the exception of those on pages 24 and 25 and the Favela chair – were presented to the public in a major show, which occupied two floors at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB) in Brasília, during February 2003.
The exhibition showed day and night. The concept was of a desertified landscape, inhabited by objects, without any type of support which was able to break this relationship.
Created by the scenographers Adriano and Fernando Guimarães, the proposal was Brechtian or, that is, that of desiccation of the language, arriving to its essence, the primordial landscape, here re-created using 20 tons of crushed PET plastic.
On this unstable surface, the contours in the landscape created different levels of observation, causing a shift in the senses, shifts in meanings.


ABOUT THE FAVELA CHAIR
The gesture of nailing slats over the rigid structure of an unsolved prototype is really similar to building wooden houses, cabins, favelas (shanties). But even more than the similarity in the building process, the final result of the Campana's brothers Favela chair tells us a great deal about architecture.
Seen as a whole, four large planes can be read, one horizontal and three vertical, which are supported on (and are at the same time) four solid legs/pillars.
Zooming in, we approach its details: small constructed views; stairs, ramps, pediments, baselines; in the end, almost the whole primary architectural vocabulary begins to arise within and around the chair.
Once, by chance, I had to turn it upside down to hammer in a loose nail. Thus, four large towers emerge, pointing upwards on a pyramid base, converging in a remote point of escape.
But I really feel its “architecture” when each time the light begins to fall on a new angle. Shadows, edges, light and dark, front/back, the same “... wise interplay of light...” of Le Corbusier. The change in the incidence of the light at each instant transforms the space and its volumes, always turning the architecture into a huge surprise, even for the creator himself.
And, believe it or not: it's very comfortable.

ATRUTH AND CREATIVITY
Soon after arriving in Brazil, I sought out the Campanas. Today I have exclusive pieces in the agency and at home. Why? Because I believe I saw an expression of life itself in those pieces, they were true objects, the idea for which arose from nature, from beyond the "unsullied page" which awaits the drawing.
They please me because they represent Brazil and South America, with an inspiration which arises spontaneously, without interferences – which is something that we don't have any more in Europe – and which makes this part of the world very much more advanced in terms of creativity.
We could think of a phenomenon such as occurred in literature, in past decades, with magical realism. But these brothers' objects speak of palpable, material reality, there is nothing in them that is magical or supernatural.
The universe of Fernando and Humberto is beautiful, a beauty which could be represented by the following words: “anything that is done from the heart, even if poor, has nobility within it”.