Three Layer Cake

Fernando and Humberto Campana at Play
VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS

(see Fernando and Humberto at work)

Which food or dessert best describes your design style?  What was it five years ago?
 

H:  I guess it would be a big fruit salad with coconut ice cream together (laugh) because it’s natural.  I love fruit because it’s textured.  Each fruit has a different texture.  Our work attracts people, especially children, who are immediately drawn to these textures.  I guess over the past five years it has been the same but with different flavors and different spices.  It changes because I travel a lot, I mature, I know more of the world.  The base is the same but the spices change. 

F:  I like to eat very much.  I don’t cook.  There’s a mall in front of my house and I go there to eat.  How can I describe this… My style is a little bit of everything!!
 

The first thing you notice in a restaurant?

H:  The chair.  I hate chairs that you can’t sit comfortably in.  Sometimes it’s ok to create a chair that you can’t sit forever in, but you can sit in a garden or places you don’t stay more than half an hour.  But for a restaurant you should use very comfortable chairs.  I have a big back problem, so if I sit and see that it’s too perpendicular, I can’t stay and eat in the restaurant and I leave. (laugh) 

F:  The light.  This is the first, then the food and service.  But sometimes you have good service and bad food, or vice versa. But the light is the thing that hits me.  It attracts you to eat.

Eating what food brings back the best memories?

H:  My mother’s food.  Rice and beans and steak.  Something that brings memories of my family together.  My father, when he was alive. 

F:  Jabuticaba – a kind of Brazilian berry that you have to eat from the tree.  And then my mind goes to November because it’s a seasonal fruit.
 

The first piece of furniture you bought for your home? 

H:  The first piece…I don’t have many designer pieces.  I have much more of my work in my home (laugh) because it’s a laboratory, I need to test them to see what’s going to happen to them, the ergonomics and comfort.  The first design piece was a round dining table by Anna Castelli. 

F:  I inherited furniture from Humberto when he graduated and moved to Bahia, but maybe the first I bought was a bed.  I think you have to have this comfort.  I have a sense of space, but I don’t like to have my house updated because it’s my house, a reflection of me.  So what you put in first depends on your mood, but a bed is the first thing for me.  I mean, you spend one-third of your life in it (laugh) so it has to be the most important thing!

The last piece of art you fell in love with?

H:  Well, there is a new auditorium here originally planned by Oscar Niemeyer after World War II, but only built recently.  Tomie Ohtake made a beautiful large sculpture for the entry of the building. 

F:  I fall in love with all art, especially if it’s well made.
 

No home is complete without…

H:  A bed. 

F:  The joy of being there.  I moved a lot in Sao Paolo.  The most important thing for each place was loving to be there, to be home.  I tried to adapt myself in each place before moving on.
 

You’ll always pick up the magazine if _________________________ is on the cover?

H:  This ranges from a porno magazine to a design magazine (laugh).  Everything that’s bizarre or elegant or vulgar pleases me!  I‘m a human being.  So wherever there is a kind of life or sincerity, I like it.  Or something that is ironic or fun.  The smile of a girl, her eyes.  It depends on my mood, what I’m feeling in that moment.  Sometimes I like to see celebrity magazines, too.  (laugh) It’s a book of humor for me.  How bizarre it is that people like to show off so much in front of the world… 

F:  Something that intrigues me, but in an intelligent way.  It varies because maybe it’s not intelligent, but a disaster, like 9/11, or the tsunami.  I also notice if it’s something in the design field that will inspire me, something that’s informative.  If it’s a newspaper, I just read the horoscope!! (laugh)(laugh)  I turn the paper upside down and inside out to find the horoscope.  (laugh)
 

Celebrity you’re inexplicably intrigued by…

H:  Madonna.  She’s still doing good things.  Inspiring people.  I like her. She’s smart.  She’s the one who uses the media.  She uses the media in a positive way.  She changed a whole generation.   We need to have celebrities, otherwise people would be socialist. 

F:  Madonna!?  My brother is usually classier than that!!  For me there are lots because some of them do good, some of them intrigue me because they have such power over people.  But let’s see…I’d say Jerry Lewis.  He was fun, he was himself, he let you escape.  When we went to the movies as boys there were more grown-up films in the evening, but in the day time we got more fun films like Jerry Lewis, Doris Day, Rita Pavone, Alberto Sordi, people who knew how to make fun of themselves.  I like to be really ironic with myself.  Anti-heroes.  They make mistakes.  Kathleen Turner doesn’t intrigue me, but I like her.  The last film of hers I saw was Serial Mom, by John Waters.  That’s a perfect film to me!!! (LAUGH)  The humor is perfect.  I really laughed.  John Waters intrigues me.
 

You’re most proud of your collection of…

H:  I like CDs.  I like music.  I like to collect music and magazines.  I like Abitare and Frame…
 

Whenever you travel, you always bring _________________________ with you?

H:  I bring magazines.  New magazines that we don’t have here in Brazil, in São Paolo.  So I can read on the plane, so I can bring them back to the studio and share with people so they can see what’s happening in these other places. 

F:  The good feeling that I bring back from having good contact with people and knowing that I learned something about another country from another culture. 
 

intro photo:  Fernando seated on the Banquete chair, photo Roberta Fortunato, here Fernando (right) and Humberto (left) at the production studio, photo Estudio Campana

VERSÃO EM PORTUGUÊS