Coffee vending machine designed by a street vendor.
“We are buying artifacts from all over the country, made by common people, to constitute a collection of popular design. Our intention is to show the extraordinary resourcefulness of our material culture.” – Adélia Borges
Brazilian curator and former director of the Museu da Casa Brasileira in São Paulo, Adélia Borges, has organized another engaging exhibition, Puras Misturi or Pure Blend.
Visitors to exhibition can sit on each of the 75 stools – a display celebrating Brazil’s diverse creative culture.
Centrally located in the Ibirapuera city park the city government has established a new Brazilian Cultures Hall (Pavilhão das Culturas Brasileiras). I visited the space in April, a week before the installation began, and was entranced not only this new design collection, but also by the architecture. The city had just completed a renovation to an 118,000 sq ft Oscar Niemeyer designed building. The open floor plan, expansive horizontal platforms and wide ramps and extensive floor to ceiling glazing along the perimeter walls seemed a fitting display area for the blend of artifacts made by indigenous Amazon artisans, street vendors, craftspeople to well known Brazilian designers such as Lina Bardi and Carlos Motta. The museum walls opened to the urban park just beyond, an apt background to the broad range of work on display. It was a “pure blend” of Brazil’s cultural diversity.
Borges also curates the upcoming III Bienal Brasileira de Design (Brazilian Design Biennial) scheduled to open in Curitiba on September 14, 2010.
