For Fernando and Humberto Campana, the recipients of the 2008 Designer of the Year Award at Design Miami, designing for a sustainable future is imperative. Optimizing resources, utilizing local means, and initiating a dialogue with the consumer seem to be the cornerstone of their design philosophy. Based in Brazil, the Campana brothers’ imaginative musings from discards and natural fibers encourage conscientious design and concurrently set a tone of parsimonious sensuality.

Diamantina. Designed by Fernando and Humberto Campana. Installed at Design Miami, 2008.

Last year the Campana Brothers won platitudes for their inspirational Transplastic series, which was unveiled at the Albion Gallery in London in 2007. Environmental yet pulchritudinous, the Transplastic series compromised of chairs, multiple-seating chairs, lamps, illuminated meteors, clouds and islands, is made from natural fiber. This year at Design Miami, the brothers will unveil the Diamantina collection, which is a progression of their TranpPlastic series and adheres to the same eco-principles as its precursor.

Textures and weaves in natural fibers invoke a sense of openness and demonstrate an inherent respect for the natural environment. Thus, its no coincidence that the Diamantina installation will utilize native Brazilian plant Apuí that grows on and ultimately garrotes rain forest trees. Apuí also played a pivotal role in the Transplastic series which featured this rattan-like fiber woven around plastic chairs and discard objects like toys, dolls, flip-flops and tires. This was to signify nature's victory over the synthetic world as the installation showed the plastic objects being completely ingested by the organic material.

The Diamantina collection is made up of a series of biomorphic islands that have Brazilian amethyst crystals weaved into them. These islands appear to be fundamental to the greater design of life and living, as they ignite consumer participation by encouraging visitors to sit on them, explore its synergy with nature. Looking straight out of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center, the collection makes a staggeringly dramatic statement with its clever starkness and also quite commendably strives for an oxygenated atmosphere.

According to the Campana brothers: "Diamantina is built in a way that the seats are sculpted along the form creating a new mode of comfort and interaction. Proposing a more subtle connection, it is a more meditative kind of experiment. By its mixture of materials, both poor by the wicker and precious by the combination with the natural amethyst, as the city, Diamantina piece evokes the same sensation of long forgotten poetry."