Fatima Arquitetura Interiores

Fatima Arquitetura Interiores — known by its acronym, FAI — was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1960 by architects Guilherme Nunes and Sávio Visconti. Unlike a conventional furniture workshop, FAI was conceived from the outset as a union of architecture, decoration and art: the company kept a gallery space that hosted artistic exhibitions connected to architecture, and Nunes and Visconti went further still, sponsoring furniture design competitions to push the local scene beyond their own output.

The two architects designed most of FAI's furniture themselves, working in solid jacaranda (Brazilian rosewood) combined with leather, cotton and hand-woven cane. Their furniture reads as distinctly architectural — right angles, careful, exacting joinery, a lounge chair that seems built to encourage good posture rather than sink into — yet retains a lightness that puts it in the company of designers like Joaquim Tenreiro, Carlo Hauner and Martin Eisler, whose work shares that same trick of making a substantial object feel visually light

FAI belongs to a category of Brazilian mid-century manufacturer — alongside houses like Celina Decorações — that mattered less for a single celebrated signature than for reach: firms like this were what carried Brazilian modernism, pioneered by name designers, into wider circulation.