Day 3 in Curitiba didn’t allow for much sightseeing – I did most of it on endless bus rides around town on Sunday – but was particularly productive when it comes to interviews, today with two of the city’s most prolific design thinkers.

I first met Fernando Galdino, who introduced me to the guys from Boana Estudio. Fernando is a true instigator of the local – and local in his terms goes a long way further than Curitiba’s comprehensive public transport network – design community. An industrial design graduate, “N Design” veteran and tireless blogger, Fernando is a real database of design institutions, references and resources. Currently designing professional laundry systems for a local manufacturer (quite a topical subject, on a day I was actually looking for a laundromat) where he applies ethnographic-based research to his work, Fernando is engaged in the design profession much beyond his day-to-day activities. Over lunch he kept on providing me names of people I should get in touch with and talk to. Better still, he actually contacted some of them for me before and after I went back to the bus tube. Valeu Fernando!

One of the people he mentioned and I quickly got in touch with was Kleber Puchaski. Kleber is the world’s only designer with a PhD in Vehicle Design from the Royal College of Arts in London – where he didn’t design vehicles, but rather the way they’re designed, even thought about. With also an MA in Design and Branding Strategy from Brunel University, he spent 5 years in the UK before coming back to Curitiba last year. He now runs his design research consultancy called Feel the Future, based on the methodology developed for his thesis, working for clients as varied as a multinational bank or a non-profit software developer. Kleber is also one of the founders of Global Design Research, a world-wide design research alliance with members in places such as Tokyo, California, New Delhi and Copenhagen. Despite travelling extensive for work around and outside Brazil, Kleber chose to come back to Curitiba for its access to culture, infrastructure, quality of living and value for money. As we moved from Joker’s Cafe to Beto Batata (two Curitiba institutions), Kleber told me next month he’ll start a position at the Federal University of Paraná as the head of the its Innovation Agency, which will connect academic expertise and research with industrial investment.

Curitiba may still feel like a small town, despite its almost 2 million inhabitants and constant growth in population, traffic and economic influence. But if Fernando and Kleber – much like former mayor Jaime Lerner – are anything to go by, we can rest assured its designers will keep on thinking big.

Thirty minutes after I arrived at my hotel in Curitiba this Saturday night I was out again to meet Alex, Mauro, Diego and Fabiano (who left before I took the photo). Mauro Rego and Alexander Czajkowski are two fourths of Boana Estudio, a young design collective based in the three Brazilian cities. I heard from them after Fernando Galdino left a comment on one of my first posts here in Alvorada, and immediately got in touch with them. Alex is still studying here, and Mauro is now teaching in Florianópolis. Gabriel Rodrigues is in Florianópolis too, and Erica Ribeiro lives in Salvador, Bahia. What led me to contact them was not only their unique working arrangement, but the fact Boana worked on the very first documentary on N Design, the Brazilian design student convention.

Entitled A Folha que Sobrou do Caderno (English title Something Worth Leaving Behind), this documentary is a series of interviews with students, professors and professionals about the role, the impact and the future of Brazilian design and the people who are now studying in the area. 48,000 students graduated in design last year from over 400 programmes all over the country, and the figures are rising. From the very first industrial design school in the country (Rio de Janeiro’s ESDI, which opened in 1963) to art schools with design degrees in cities like Salvador or Brasília, from more trade-oriented institutes in the industry-rich southern states to “advertising art director factories” in São Paulo, design students in Brazil are anything but uniform. N Design, or N, is held once a year in a different city, and is the place where everyone comes together to meet, network, present their work and discuss their education and their profession. This year’s N, which took place in Recife, gathered about 4500 2500 students (thanks Rafael for the correction!), nothing like the 4500 who went to Florianopolis in 2007. Alex, Diego Silvério and Fabiano Braga (all of them students, but already working collectively on projects with Mauro and other people in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Florianópolis under the extended name of Mobile) are organising next year’s N, which will take place here, in the year Curitiba will also host the Brazilian Design Biennale.

It was very rewarding to chat with these guys last night. I got yet another perspective into the reality and the challenges Brazilian designers – from its youngest, most networked and collaborative generation – face in our time of global transition.