Rosenbaum®
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.
When I met him today at the Casa Brasil Design fair in Bento Gonçalves, and we walked around the fair before lunch, he was constantly stopped by people wanting to take a photo next to him. Marcelo’s fame comes however not so much from his interior and product design work for brands like Melissa or other high-profile clients, or even his radio show, but largely because of his TV show on Globo, called Lar Doce Lar. It’s a sort of Brazilian Extreme Makeover, where he goes around the country making a difference in people’s homes and communities. Marcelo has also taken part in the latest Piracema Design Laboratory project in the deep in the state of Tocatins town of Jalapão, as well as other community initiatives, like the Oasis Santa Catarina project in the flood-stricken area of Blumenau.
Rosenbaum’s energy is captivating; both his persona and the work produced by his studio manage to speak to a broad spectrum of Brazilians, from ladies-who-lunch and stroll down Óscar Freire to the poor masses who watch him on TV. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to talk to him, as after our lunch with Heloísa Crocco, her son Thomaz, Tatiana Sperhacke and Ademir Bueno, (design director for Tok & Stok, Brazil’s largest furniture retailer he disappeared into the fair’s crowd. I’ll be catching up with him later in my exploration.
