The Florence 2001 seminar — Local Identity Today and Globalization
In the year 2001, by the efforts of Francis Burkhardt, a seminar was held in Florence, Italy, under the title of "Local Identity Today and Globalization." In this seminar, topics such as: the subjective and sensational reflection of identity in the global age; local identity and cultural variety; architectural origins and design; popular art and intellectual culture; and the position of handicrafts in the global market — were discussed. In the following lines, on the occasion of this seminar, we will briefly discuss the actual situation of design and its connection to culture and identity, and afterwards we will introduce two Brazilian designers, the Campana brothers.
Local identity against industrial uniformity
Attention to identity, alongside the trend of the uniformity of industrial products, has become one of the principal concerns of contemporary design. The realisation of identity in consumer goods carries an ambiguity that springs, on the one hand, from the wish to tie identity to worldview and tradition, and, on the other, from its contradiction with novelty and creativity in design thought, and its discord with any kind of limitation.
The currency of the discussion of local identity against globally driven social approaches can be read as a hurried reaction to the dominance of the new rules of global economy and trade in production relations and life patterns. Globalization rests on a contradictory move: 'preserving the pattern of local culture while reducing the powerful central structure to one link of global trade.' But the experience of freedom and the choice within plural cultural variety calls for the fertilising of local cultures.
Since the start of the critique of modernity around the 1960s, various accounts of the capacities of local culture and of its relation to individual currents and different local identities have come into circulation. Modern design, founded on the ideology of the International Style, fitted the system of industrial production to patterns and modes of automatic production. Automation may be counted modernity's greatest achievement on the technological side; on the cultural side, modernity's greatest achievement is uniformity — the uniformity of life patterns, modes of consumption, and unavoidably modes of production and idea-making.
The huge advertising machine, which rapidly creates a need for every product, has caused the original criteria of design to be set aside, and design to fall into fashion. In the age of globalization, achieving a logical balance between worthy design — based on experience and culture and in tune with the active variables of the market — is the principal question of design. Yet today good design comes, before everything else, to mean good business.
The Campana brothers and the country of Brazil
The work of Humberto and Fernando Campana, Italian designers who now live in Brazil, is worth thinking about as one of the prospects of design's future in the age of globalization. Humberto Campana studied law and Fernando architecture; they have worked in artistic design since 1983. The signature of the Campanas' design is the insistence on cheap materials and industrial off-cuts. They hold that, in a poor country, hand-made products are an opportunity for liberation.
Brazil is the land of sun, of fresh and deep meanings, of low-value materials, the land of samba — a region to be discovered anew. Perhaps the same impulse that led Paul Gauguin from the cloudy and ever-rainy sky of Europe to the sunny, brilliant equator has brought the Campanas to Brazil. They say: 'Without searching we shall not arrive at any solution; and without a solution no new idea is created. The geographical and cultural features of Brazil are a fertile field in which we have planted our young tree. Using cheap materials, too, gives us the chance to think and experiment. The lower-grade and lower-value materials, in apparent contradiction with the developing country's economic situation and Italy's advanced technology, help us to reach solutions with unique structural and technical forms.'
Cooperation with Edra
The company Edra in Tuscany, Italy, has taken on the production of the Campanas' ideas. To explain the construction method of the Vermelha chair, they sent a video tape to Edra, since they believed they could not, by drawn geometry alone, make all the points and details of the construction clear to Edra's technicians. Edra is always ready to execute their complex ideas, and has been generous with time and cost in this work.
The management thinking at Edra has a particular independence and resists following the customary currents; the meeting of this attitude with the Campanas' way of thinking and expression has made for a very successful cooperation between them and the firm. The Campanas say of the future: 'We look upon our work as a high process with the capacity of permanent development; but at the same time we live for today, since we do not know how the world of tomorrow will be. The only thing we are sure of is our creativity, on which we lean. Everything is changing very fast and without any clear direction. Even so, the destination of all efforts on different paths is the same: creation and the experience of the new in the new world.'
Exhibitions and books
The Campanas have introduced their work through two exhibitions in 1994 and 1995 at the Brazilian consulate in Milan, and through their Bamboo floor lamp design for the company O Luce. A number of their designs were printed in the 1997 book selected by Philippe Starck, and MoMA in New York presented their work in its 1998 exhibition Progetto 66.
Notes: 1. Francis Burkhardt — architect and critic, currently editor of Domus magazine. 2. Local Identity Today and Globalization. 3. Fernando e Humberto Campana. 4. Edra — Edra began its work in 1987 in an area near Nuovissmi in Tuscany; its early production was designed by young designers making their first work; the firm grew quickly in the international market by virtue of the original quality of its products. 6. O Luce. 7. MoMA.
