Wallpaper* Global Interiors: a snapshot of design from South America

The next stop in Wallpaper’s Global Interiors 2021 journey features design from South America, including pieces by world-famous architects and emerging designers from across the region. Our search for some of the most inspiring furniture design across six continents is represented in the April issue of Wallpaper* magazine through a sequence of immersive images created by Berlin 3D design studio Form & Rausch. Here, we showcase in more detail our pick of design from South America.

Taller Capitan

Launched by architect Jeremías Merino Pena, Uruguayan design studio Taller Capitan specialises in interiors and furniture, with a focus on repurposed and recycled materials. Case in point, the ‘No Waste’ chair, made using reclaimed metal scraps and part of a series exploring recycling options in furniture. The sustainable chair’s compact and practical design (featuring a three-legged frame and a handle to move it around the house) makes it a perfect piece for modern domestic interiors.

Perceptual

Colombian product designer Simón Ballen Botero creates objects and furniture that combine his interest in anthropology with explorations of craft, heritage, local traditions and material culture. After working and studying across Europe (in Italy, Finland, Iceland and the Netherlands), Ballen Botero settled in Medellín, where he started his studio, Perceptual. Recent projects include the Miranda collection, made of different combinations of woods and upholstery and comprising chairs, tables, a stool and bench, and a bookcase.

It Met Studio

Buenos Aires-based designers Juan García Mosqueda and Maximiliano Ciovich of collective design studio It Met have created a tribute to Donald Judd’s formal approach, with a table. Made of aluminium and iron, the table features chunky tubular legs and a double top, keeping its silhouette super simple.

Cristaleria San Carlos

Argentine design studio Ries has applied its sophisticated forms to crystal, thanks to a collaboration with Cristaleria San Carlos, based in the country’s Santa Fe. The Fuso collection is experimental in its forms, achieving a practical result. ‘We often relate glass receptacles to pure geometries, which fall in the category of what, in maths, is called “solids of revolution”,’ comment studio founders Marcos Altgelt and Tasio Picollo. ‘We believe these morphologies generally lack self-identity as they tend to make the contained liquid look very rigid.’ The glassware collection, they explain, is intended to represent ‘an intermediate moment between two physical states of matter in order to give the contained liquid new and unexpected forms’.

Wentz

Guilherme Wentz established his eponymous design brand in 2019, celebrating ‘the terra brasilis and its tropicality with the purpose of transforming environments into contemplative extensions of nature’. A brand creating furniture, lighting and home accessories with a simple and contemporary aesthetic, Wentz’s pieces are minimal essentials for the home. The ‘Adobe’ floor lamp (pictured) is designed to achieve movement and tension through a static object: a thin metal rod fixed on a marble base and equipped with a blown-glass orb that can move vertically forms a functional response to minimalism.

Studio MK27

Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan is a long-term collaborator of Italian furniture company Minotti. His studio’s latest contribution to the brand’s catalogue is a series of chairs inspired by Japan’s Hotel Okura and his own travels to the country. The chair features a curved teak clam shell and removable cushions upholstered in water-repellent polyester fabric, suitable for the outdoors.

Bravo

Architect Rodrigo Bravo works across scales to create spaces, objects and furniture informed by an understanding of materials and manufacturing processes. His ‘TM3’ table (pictured) is part of a series titled Tube Mutations exploring how a simple tubular shape can become both functional furniture and decorative piece. ‘This piece of ambiguous logic proposes to inhabit a diffuse space between a table, a seat or a sculpture,’ says Bravo.