Trans... Chair Armchair

The Campana brothers of Brazil are among the most innovative designers working today. Their work includes prototypes and small edition designs fabricated in their own studio, as well as works manufactured by firms such as the Italian furniture company Edra, housewares manufacturer Alessi, and jewelry and product producer H. Stern. One hallmark of the brothers’ approach is to transform mundane materials, often in unexpected combinations, into functional and thought-provoking objects, as seen in their 2007 TransPlastic exhibition in London, where they utilized traditional caning techniques to transform basic plastic café chairs. The chair under consideration represents the final stage of this series and was designed as part of the Campana brothers’ commission as the latest guest curators for Cooper-Hewitt’s Selects exhibition series. This chair is highly conceptual and narrative, investigating the relationship between the natural and the synthetic. In the designers’ words, the chair is in the “last stage before it becomes natural . . . It is the last battle in the fictional story where nature overpowers plastic.” The Campana brothers have declared that the TransPlastic series “comes full circle with this chair. The projecting objects are very intentional as they are seen to be iconic plastic forms being ‘expelled’ from the natural woven chair . . . TransPlastic tells a fictional story: in a world made of plastic, synthetic matter eventually becomes a fertile ground for transgenic creations. The natural fibers recover the plastic as in an immunological response. Nature grows from the plastic and overpowers it.” This is a chair that offers commentary while functioning as seating within the vocabulary of casual furniture interpretations. The piece supports the intellectual overlay of designers who are concerned with their environment.