Have FAITH.

Design studio Furf’s founders, Mauricio Noronha and Rodrigo Brenner have presented to the world, divine sculptures: Holy Mary, Buddha and Iemanjá, produced with a biomaterial of natural origin, that is durable and sustainable.

Furf Design Studio has been creating extraordinary projects with humans brave enough to design “a more poetic and result driven future”.  Seats from leaf fabric, a gadget that indicates anomalies in the quality of rainwater, related to pollution, an ephemeral furniture that exists only in the digital world, the first NFT creation of the design studio, are just some of the wide variety of intuitive and inventive designs from the Brazilain design studio. Together with its customers, Furf has conquered the world with over 30 national and international awards, including three of the most prestigious in the world: Cannes Lions, iF and Red Dot. The commercial success linked to Furf developed products has also helped its founders, Mauricio Noronha and Rodrigo Brenner, join the Forbes Under30 list.

“At Furf we are always trying to push boundaries of technology, business and of the meaning of the products. To combine different worlds, to make hearts smile. We will keep innovating and provoking with projects from different areas,” say the founders of Furf, about their particular zest for designing products that straddle technology and design innovativeness while all the products try to include the sustainability tag.

In 2022, the design duo proffered to the design world idols that cleans the environment. We speak to Rodrigo Brenner to know more about this intriguing product.

We start with this simple question: Why? Why do we need these idols?

Brenner is quick to defend the new design idea, he says, “The answer to this question is another question: what is the need for faith? In Brazil we were Baptised in the Catholic church, we salute Shiva in our yoga practices, meditate with Buddhist teachings, participate in traditional Amazonian ceremonies and every New Year, we always try to skip seven waves to make wishes to the Queen of the Sea. We are surrounded by different religions and deities – they all coexist here. The idea of Faith is to (re)connect Science and Art, technology with tradition. We created three sculptures inspired by beloved divine figures.”

Brenner explains the material used to make this religious product, “To make each sculpture, there is a dialogue between the traditional and the technological: generic images of popular saints were 3D scanned, enhanced with modern software to create the 3D printed moulds – which serve as a cradle for the growth of mycelium, a biomaterial also used by NASA. No marble or bronze, a high technology developed by Mush (a promising Brazilian startup). Mycelium is a biomaterial of natural origin, durable and sustainable. With a negative carbon footprint, it cleans the environment with its production.”

A limited edition of seven units of each figure, instigated by the need to not find barriers between religion, science, tradition and innovation.

“In this plural syncretism lies a beautiful part of our national identity, the power to unite, instead of polarize. We just need to have faith,” he asserts.

Looking forward to the design firm’s new collaborations: “We have a long lasting collaboration with The Walt Disney Company and O Boticário (a Brazilian cosmetic titan), soon we will launch the result of this partnerships. Also at this year’s Milan Design Week, we will exhibit at Design Sucks – a provocative Italian brand that we are now Design directors.”

Though the firm abhors more build forms, the reason they design is quite evident: “We don’t really need to produce more objects, but we all wish to have a better future, we desire more poetry in our crazy daily lives; and through Design we can contribute with this.”

Images Courtesy: Furf Design Studio