MINHA CASA É SUA CASA

One day in 2002, brothers and design partners Humberto and Fernando Campana came across a São Paulo street vendor selling stuffed animals, bought a bunch and promptly stitched them into a chair with stainless-steel legs. Soft, joyfully floppy and slightly surreal, the chair has spawned numerous editions and has become one of contemporary design’s most recognizable objects, with fans ranging from Kylie Jenner to the contemporary artist KAWS. But more than launching Estudio Campana to fame, their boundary-breaking audacity has paved the way for a new generation of Brazilian designers, giving them a global spotlight the country hasn’t enjoyed since midcentury furniture makers such as Joaquim Tenreiro and Lina Bo Bardi were on the scene.

This younger breed of artisans share their predecessors’ affinity for modernism and devotion to materials, but those woods are not the locally sourced examples that were the old guard’s calling card. Jacaranda, a dark rosewood that was a favorite of the midcentury designers, has been logged almost to the point of extinction, and the exportation of it is now highly restricted. Even so, Brazil’s deforestation of the Amazon is at a 12-year high. “The situation is really terrible,” says Virgilio Viana, the director general of the Amazonas Sustainability Foundation and one of the country’s leading experts on environmental