Furniture design provocateur Fernando Campana dies at 61

And its do-it-yourself culture, using whatever is at hand, which has often led to comedic scenes in places like museums. There was the time they sent their Bubble Wrap chair, packed in a Bubble Wrap box, to a show in Rio. As they told Wallpaper magazine in 2020, “When we arrived to check out the exhibit, the chair was completely destroyed. The crew that received it kept peeling off the sheets, looking for the chair! Luckily, it was an easy fix, because all we had to do was run to the office supply store and replace the plastic sheets. »

The brothers were symbiotic, finishing each other’s thoughts, if not each other’s sentences. Interviewers often quoted them speaking as one.

“A remarkable ‘they,'” said Murray Moss, the design impresario who for years sold the Campana brothers’ work at his gallery-like store in New York. “My experience of them as people is that they weren’t designing anything, they were jumping off a cliff.”

He described an adventure with the brothers at Venini, the centuries-old glassworks in Murano, Italy, to make a series of exquisite bells, one of many commissions he gave them, although they hadn’t decided exactly what they were going to do. design until they are inside the factory.

“The factory is made up of groups of men around a fire,” Moss continued. “The brothers entered basically in bathing suits. They thought it was going to be hot. They didn’t know they had to protect themselves. Fernando fainted that first day. But the next day, they started designing, which was basically an improvisation of sketches and shouts: Classic bell shape, go for it! Add two handles, let’s go! We made 150 bells. I was very proud to be with them. »

Fernando Piva Campana was born on May 19, 1961 in Brotas, a small country town outside São Paulo, the youngest of three brothers. His father, Alberto, was an agricultural engineer; his mother, Célia (Piva) Campana, was a teacher. Fernando studied architecture at the University Center of Fine Arts in São Paulo. Besides Humberto, Fernando is survived by another brother, José.