The image is © Campana Design LTDA EPP 2008. There are 13 other images of this object. See our image rights statement.
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Trans... Chair Armchair
This is a armchair. It was designed by Fernando Campana and Humberto Campana and made by Estudio Campana. It is dated 2007 and we acquired it in 2007. Its medium is wicker, iron, found objects (plastic, rubber). It is a part of the Product Design and Decorative Arts department.
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.
This object was featured in our Object of the Week series in a post titled A battle between nature and plastic.
It is credited Commissioned from the designers by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.
- Vermelha Chair
- bent epoxy-coated steel, hand woven dyed cotton rope, aluminum.
- Gift of Edra SpA, Italy.
- 2007-39-1
- Prototype, Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) Concept Prototype
- 3-d printed rapid prototype material.
- Courtesy of JHU Applied Physics Lab.
- 16.2013.2
- Hack, Roomba Cam
- robotic hardware, digital movie file, format: uncompressed .mov file....
- Courtesy of the designers.
- 15.2014.1
Our curators have highlighted 2 objects that are related to this one.
- Prosthetic Limb, Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) Long Transradial Socket
- carbon fiber, aluminum, steel, select polymers.
- Courtesy of JHU Applied Physics Lab.
- 16.2013.3
- Prosthetic Hand, Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) v. 1.0
- aluminum, steel, printed circuit boards, select polymers.
- Courtesy of JHU Applied Physics Lab.
- 16.2013.1
Its dimensions are
H x W x D: 102.5 x 96.5 x 83 cm (40 3/8 in. x 38 in. x 32 11/16 in.)
Cite this object as
Trans... Chair Armchair; Designed by Fernando Campana (Brazilian, b. 1961), Humberto Campana (Brazilian, b. 1953); Made by Estudio Campana (Brazil); Brazil; wicker, iron, found objects (plastic, rubber); H x W x D: 102.5 x 96.5 x 83 cm (40 3/8 in. x 38 in. x 32 11/16 in.); Commissioned from the designers by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; 2007-46-1
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibitions Esperanza Spalding Selects and Campana Brothers Select: Works from the Permanent Collection.
