After 31 days, seven cities and over 25 interviews and many, many hours of observations, conversations and reflections on Brazilian design, I left Rio at dusk on August 26th.
I will keep updating alvorada.org from Lisbon and – as of September 14th – from New York, with more mini-profiles, stories and other findings.
I intend on returning to São Paulo for a week (October 19th to 25th) for some more interviews – if I can work out the necessary funding.
When asked about why he writes, Portuguese writer Antonio Lobo Antunes once answered: “Ask an apple tree why it bears apples”. During our conversation at his studio/showroom in Humaitá, Sérgio Rodrigues used this very quote to describe his own work, an analogy he uses to answer the people who question him about “not following trends” or designing today things that seem to have been designed 40 years ago.
At 85 years of age, Rodrigues is not particularly concerned with critics, not even with the esprit du temps. His designs – over 1,500 of them – are reflections of how he draws and thinks, processes that have remained largely untouched over his long career. He is one of Brazil’s pioneers in furniture design and remains an inspiration for designers all over the country – but particularly abroad, as his work has gained increased recognition and value over the last years.
Rodrigues is a pleasure to talk to, and our hour and a half was surely not enough to learn more about his achievements, friendships, failures and curious stories (like Kim Novak’s goat standing on a Poltrona Mole in her house in California) he talks about with great wit and generousity.
We’ll be meeting again on September 15th, when Sérgio will come to New York for the launch of his collection of lamps and “Chifruda” chair at Espasso.
Renata Gamelo (left), Cecília Pessoa (right) and Flávia Lira (who unfortunately left before we came down to São Pedro Square for the photo) are the tireless women who run the Recife Design Centre.
The first thing they point out in conversation is that their work is not tying local designers with manufacturers, or promote design next to entrepreneurs and the local economy. For that there’s the Pernambuco Design Center, which is part of Sebrae (Brazil’s Federal Agency for the support of small and medium companies) and does just that on a state-wide level.
Their centre belongs to Recife’s municipal culture department and promotes design as a cultural activity. It may seem at first that in a place with almost no industry, the industry of culture is all it’s left for design.
Ana Maria Queiroz de Andrade and Virgínia Pereira Cavalcanti are professors at the Federal University of Pernambuco and the founders of the Imaginário Pernambucano project. But that’s only the start. The project began in 2000 with the creation of the University’s Benfica Cultural Centre, aimed at strengthening ties between academia and society.
Since then, they have been promoting community initiatives that, stemming from folk art, work with and develop communities around the state of Pernambuco, of which Recife is the capital. If in terms of community design/craft development Imaginário’s projects may not seem to offer anything substantially new, it’s when we look at the wider scope of their action that we realise craft is only the start. Whenever they start a new project, Imaginário’s team gathers other university professors and students from areas such as engineering, planning and social sciences to tackle the community’s needs from as many angles as possible, in an integrated, sustainable way. Read the rest of this entry »
Shortly after I arrived in Recife, Patrícia Amorim and her boyfriend Raul Aguiar took me to Olinda for lunch and for the view. Patrícia is the main reason I actually came here: she wrote me an email on the day I left Lisbon for São Paulo, where she said she has been writing on design for newspapers and magazines here in Pernambuco, wrote her master dissertation on how design has been featured in 5 years of the Veja magazine, helped out Adélia Borges on her curation for the “Fronteiras: Design Brasileiro Hoje” exhibition and – if all that wasn’t enough – is thinking on applying for the D-Crit programme. I immediately considered adding Recife to my itinerary just to talk to her and learn more about all the things she mentioned.
And it was totally worth it. Patrícia and Raul (who runs a design and illustration studio with his brother) not only welcomed me into their flat, but were great guides around Recife. They’re both quite well connected in the city, and Patrícia managed to arrange the two meetings/interviews that later took place – and also walks around the centre and Olinda, a beach break at Praia da Boa Viagem (where I managed to avoid the sharks) and plenty of great local food and drinks.
Inhotim is one of the most sophisticated places in the world to see contemporary art. The large property about 60km from Belo Horizonte, owned by mining millionaire Bernardo Paes, feels – as Marcelo Drummond put it so well – like ”Berlin in the sertão”. There are some amazing artworks from Brazilian and foreign contemporary artist to be seen around the gardens and inside the pavilions. More photos after the jump. Photography is only allowed outside, but some of the art can be seen in the Institute’s website.
I spent my first day in Belo Horizonte with graphic designer and professor Marcelo Drummond. Marcelo is one of the founders of the Piracema Laboratory, and long-time friend of Heloísa Crocco (who introduced us by email while I saw stil in Porto Alegre). He picked me up from my hotel and we went straight to the Central Market, in what was a great introduction to the city (and where I ate three different kinds of Pão de Queijo for breakfast). Then we went to Pampulha, to have take a look at the buildings designed in the 1940s by Óscar Niemeyer on the banks of the artificial lake. We marvelled at the what was then a luxurious casino for the rich and famous of Minas Gerais and is now the Pampulha Art Museum, directed by Marcelo’s twin brother, Marconi. After lunch at Xapuri (also in Pampulha, a classic destination for the region’s food), we went back to Belo Horizonte to check out the Arts and Crafts Museum (in what was before the city’s central train station) and the bookshop at the Arts Palace (a 1970 design also by Niemeyer).
Marcelo and I covered a lot of ground during this very full day; from his PhD thesis on vernacular typography to concerns over the future of Piracema and other like-minded projects to using museums as places for material culture (and therefore design) classes. One of the things we spent quite a long time talking about was what he calls the aesthetization of poverty, this sort of fascination artists and designers – from Brazil and abroad – have with the precarious, makeshift belongings and ways of the poor. This perverse fascination galvanises the desperate resourcefulness of the “have nots” into the creative inventiveness of the “haves”, who are seldom bothered with the actual conditions people live in, or how to improve them. Many times during my trip I’ve heard this is a trait of “brazilian design”, something that always leaves me with an uneasy feeling.
There is a general sense of optimism, even enthusiasm, in the conversations I’ve had here in Brazil. The people I’ve talked to seem to be doing rather well; they don’t seem to have reasons to complain about their work or their condition as designers. There’s obviously always room for improvement, and much work to be done, but things seem to be heading in the right direction for Brazilian design.
But after meeting Ethel Leon in her São Paulo neighbourhood of Higienópolis I somehow managed to look at a bigger picture. Ethel is a design author, historian, curator and professor; her enlightening essay “Jovens Objectos Velhos” (Young Old Objects), which I volunteered to translate into English (soon), inspired one of my thesis’ areas of research. Read the rest of this entry »
On August 13th I met both Renato Imbroisi over breakfast and Paula Dib over lunch a few Vila Madalena blocks apart. Representing two generations and experiences in Brazilian community-based design and craft, they share many of the same goals, achievements and concerns, but have quite different experiences. Read the rest of this entry »
I met Pedro Ariel and Lucia Gurovitz – respectively editor-in-chief and design editor for Casa Cláudia – at the Idea Brasil award ceremony. Pedro later emailed me and mentioned they’d like talk to a bit more about my research, so on my return we met for lunch at the executive dining room on the top of the Abril headquarters, where we were joined by Regina Galvão (right), senior editor of the magazine – after lunch we checked out the terrace’s impressive view. Read the rest of this entry »
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