The Campana Brothers Give Design Miami a Material Signature

Humberto and Fernando Campana have received Design Miami’s 2008 Designer of the Year award. Their project Diamantina draws on Apui, a Brazilian plant associated with rainforest trees, bringing a distinctive material reference into the fair’s presentation.

The commission gives the award a physical expression. Instead of asking visitors to understand a career only through a biography or a selection of familiar objects, it introduces a material and a spatial encounter. The work’s connection to Brazil remains part of its meaning while it is presented to an international audience in Miami.

This is one of the useful functions of a design fair: it can make the origins and handling of materials visible within a setting otherwise dominated by finished objects. The Campana brothers’ recognition places that question near the center of the week. Their contribution offers a way to discuss design through the relationship between a material’s character and the forms a designer asks it to take.