Havaianas

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Solitário necklace, Oiti for Ronaldo Fraga

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Arapuca Shelf, Rodrigo Almeida

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Pindorama vinyl tablecloths, Marcelo Rosenbaum

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Consul Washing Machine, Consul

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Bananaplac, Fibradesign

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flyers for Fernando Gabeira's campaign for mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Tátil Design

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ZigZag Hanger, Nódesign

Quará hangers, Nódesign

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Gadget Shelf, Bernardo Senna for Tok&Stok

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"Jalapa" Project, Piracema Design Lab

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Condiment Jars, O Imaginário for CIV

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Limited edition Lacoste polo shirt, Fernando and Humberto Campana

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Rendeira Lounge Chair, Flávia Pagotti Silva

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Heloísa Crocco and Normélio

I got to know Heloísa Crocco and her work through Adélia Borges, whom I met the day before I left to Porto Alegre. I was going to stay in a hotel there, but Adélia called Heloísa to ask if her “wooden box” studio on the outskirts of Porto Alegre, by the Guaíba river, would be free the next 2 days. This is where she welcomes friends, artists and curators there as a sort of informal artists’ residence. Lucky for me, it was free.

Crocco's studio gorgeous sleeping quarters

Heloísa is trained as an artist, but has been working as a designer for many years. Most of her time is dedicated to the design of surface patterns and decorative panels, where she explores wood texture elements in varying levels of abstraction, namely in her own line of decorative ceramics at Tok&Stok. She is also a pioneer in developing community-based design and craft projects, and this was what interested me most in meeting her.

Heloísa is a co-founder of Piracema Design Lab, a research project dedicated to “form in Brazilian culture” initiated by a multidisciplinary 7-person team: herself, photographer Fabio del Re, artist and professor José Alberto Nemer, twin sisters and architects/designers Lui Lo Pomo and Tina Azevedo Moura, Renato Imbroisi and Marcelo Drummond. I met some of the other members later in my trip.

Image taken from a Piracema Design Lab presentation

Piracema is seen as one of the most consistent and respected projects in this field; through its “Faber” project, it has been instructing professionals (artists, designers, craftsmen) to work in projects that bring together design and craft. This is thus not a one-hit-wonder project where a group of designers goes to a remote community and teaches people how to improve their craft through design. In a way it’s also about that, but this 1-year program is mostly about providing the knowledge and tools to understand both the market (in its potential and limitations) and the communities these professionals will work with in the long run.

Through its scientific base and multidisciplinary approach, Piracema avoids the empirical methods and unilateralism of other, similar projects. Allowing the artisan to be sovereign over its work and authorship, it wishes to cultivate the product of his or her work as a materialization of a cultural heritage, observed in its context and anthropological complexity.

Jalapão (image from the rosenbaum® blog)

Mainly with the support of Sebrae, Piracema has developed community projects in several states, the last of which took place this July in Jalapão, a landlocked plateau region in the state of Tocantins. During the time I spent with Heloísa in Porto Alegre the experience of being in that remote place was still very fresh in her mind. We talked a lot about what happens when a team of designers goes to places like these: how the community they meet reacts, how much they learn from one another and how significant the impact of the experience is on both.

The day after I arrived we (Heloísa, her son Thomaz, Tatiana and myself) went up to Bento Gonçalves for the first day of the Casa Brasil Design fair. We got there just as Marcelo Rosenbaum was finishing his talk, right on time for him to join us for lunch. Rosenbaum had been the invited designer for Piracema’s Jalapão project, and this was the first they had reunited after the experience.

Heloísa, Thomaz and Marcelo ('s tatooed arm).

Over what was a remarkably northern Italian lunch near Bento Gonçalves, they shared many stories from those unforgettable ten or so days working with local people and capim dourado. This tall plant, whose naturally golden stem is used to make a myriad of objects, was the material of choice for this project. Also at the table was Ademir Bueno, design manager at Tok&Stok, who had been following this and other Piracema projects closely, as some of the resulting products find their way to its nationwide network of stores. You can see some photos of the project’s team and results on Rosenbaum’s blog or on Tok&Stok’s website.

Normélio's stuff

On our 2-hour car journey back from Bento to Porto Alegre, we bought bergamot oranges by the roadside, and as we passed the village of São Sebastião do Caí, Heloísa made sure she stopped at her friend Normélio’s to say hi. He welcomed us in the kitchen of his amazing wooden house for tea. Normélio collects and restores antique German colony furniture and surrounds himself of decade-, in some case century-old, artifacts that in this part of Brazil don’t feel even particularly exotic.

Normélio's Tea

Having turned 60 this year, Heloísa told me she feels it’s now time for her to go back to her own work and “pass on the torch”. She wishes Piracema to evolve as a project, to involve younger people and adapt to future challenges. Judging from her contagious enthusiasm and energy, but also Piracema’s talented team and track record, I have no doubt the project will remain as relevant and inspiring as it is now.

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.