Having arrived at the Casa Brasil Design around 3pm yesterday, I walked around and inside the fair’s stands, meeting some of the designers and manufacturers. Around 5pm there was a “bate-papo”, or conversation, between the jurors of the Salão Design Award. Bernardo Senna, Ademir Bueno, Guto Índio da Costa and Maria Helena Estrada. They held a lively debate over their work as jurors, about how they didn’t give out some of the awards in order to elevate the distinction’s level, and didn’t shy from making – especially Maria Helena – rather critical observations to the furniture factory owners showing their products in the surrounding halls.

After the talk I paid a visit to Ilse Lang. Her Faro Design stand was much calmer by then, and we could actually sit down and talk for a while, where we mostly talked about identity in design. Not that this issue is particularly dear to Ilse, but she is a good example of how the notion of Brazilian – as any other national bracket – design is problematic in itself. This is something Marco Romanelli reflected upon in his June 1991 article for domus that first presented the work of Fernando and Humberto Campana in the international press.

Ilse lives and works in Porto Alegre, but is from Caçapava do Sul, Brazil’s “south of the south”. She feels closer to the more monochromatic, wide open “pampa” landscape of the region that encompasses southern Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina than the tropical exuberance foreigners often associate with Brazil. Her name itself reflects her German-speaking immigrant colony ancestry. Her work, which has won several awards and can be found all over Brazil and abroad, also fails to express that “brazilian quality” we may be trying to find. And it shouldn’t have to. After all, there are so many landscapes, races, dialects, origins and qualities to Brazil’s 190 million people. Ilse Lang is just one of them.

Later that night the Award Gala for Salão Design took place in the Bangalô club here in Bento Gonçalves, where I spent a good time talking to Bernardo Senna and also to Fábio Yoshio on how mixed up a place Brazil is.

Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister once said that a famous designer is like a famous electrician: design fame is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, limited to the design profession and, more recently, the “design world”. In the case of Marcelo Rosenbaum things are a little different. He may be virtually unknown outside of Brazil, but here the guy’s really famous. (more…)

Tatiana Sperhacke and her husband Raul Krebs picked me up at the Porto Alegre airport this morning, and we went straight to the Fundação Iberê Camargo for lunch. Álvaro Siza‘s only second (thanks Paulo Moreira for the correction!) building in South America is a true architectural gem – despite the silly toilet symbols his clients still let him get away with. Walking along its narrow corridors and spacious halls on a sunny, crisp day like today made the experience even grander. (more…)

I spent the better part of my day with three amazing women.
First, design journalist and curator and former director of Museu da Casa Brasileira Adélia Borges, who has been a terrific guiding hand for me from the very first moment, welcomed me into her house/office in Vila Madalena for a great lunch and conversation. I forgot to take a photo of Adélia, but I will meet her again in Bento Gonçalves and also on the 11th here in São Paulo – more news on that later.

Just as I left Adélia’s street I got a call from Daniela Pizetta, who I got in touch before coming to Brazil through design journalist and curator Aric Chen. She picked me up on the corner and we drove to her husband’s Bike Shop. Cris runs one of the few licenced Harley Davidson workshops in Brazil, and he started our chat there. Then we walked up to the Sunset spot in Vila Beatriz, where we arrived just after the sun set. And today was the first day I actually saw São Paulo’s blue sky… We went back to their place and continued talking over pizza about Daniela’s experience with Brazilian product design, design development and export, in what was a remarkably insightful take into the industry, its achievements but also its shortcomings over the past years.

Then I got a taxi – with the greatest, most politically opinionated cab driver I’ve ever met – to Morumbi, where I met Flávia Pagotti Silva. Flávia had a really busy day, and is having a very busy week of exciting new projects and commissions, so we could only talk from 8pm. Her cool, soon to be 4-year old son Pedro paid us company throughout the talk/interview, repeatedly attempting to fly over the couch.

Yesterday I managed to see three remarkably different versions of São Paulo:
1. Lunch at the Museu da Casa Brasileira, the place to go to see Brazilian furniture, applied arts and the gardens of the Fábio Prado mansion.
2. More books and general wonderment at Shopping Cidade Jardim, Brazil’s most exclusive (and dare I say beautifully executed by Arthur Mattos Casas) shopping mall, which includes a whole floor dedicated to Art&Design – an empty floor, but I guess the intention is there.
3. Chopps and more at Bar Brahma, a São Paulo classic in downtown. While the bar and its fenced terrace are delightful, its surroundings are somewhat bleak: homeless people and crackheads wonder the streets, alone or in groups. Some of downtown São Paulo’s blocks and streets are appropriately called “Cracolândia”. I wondered how long it will take for this area to become gentrified…

Along the way me and the Finottis met some friends, eventually sitting down together at Bar Brahma: first Domingos Pascali, an architect and associate of Isay Weinfeld, plus former fabricanti and product designer Brunno Jahara. No Sunday rest from Brazilian design.