oficinaethos + rodrigo calixto

Before turning 30, Rodrigo Calixto had already been pointed out in the Brazilian market as one of the new exponents on joinery and furniture design. Born in Rio de Janeiro, he takes the daring, relaxed, and creative climate from the Marvelous City to his work.
His emotional connection with wood began at home – his father's influence – but it was during his undergraduate course on Industrial Design at PUC-RJ, that this passion took hold. During the course, Calixto had free access to the campus carpentry workshop where, between equipments and tools, he found his vocation.
Since then he threw himself on the study of wood, its applications, cuts, weights, colors and possibilities. Self-taught, with experiments, trials and errors, he started to develop works that given their plasticity often act as objects of design as well as fine arts.
In the contemporary design scenario, the computer is with no doubt the main tool in use and the plastic the most suggested material for the creation of objects. Between pencil sketches on paper, Rodrigo Calixto had an insight to where his work would go: against the current. In spite of plugs, tablet pens, or industrial polymers, Calixto's work is developed on the studio's floor, on the wood, on the time and dedication needed for each manual job. Making use of the “classic” he showed how much he is contemporary.
Nine years later, his award-winning work ranges from the design of creative furniture – which stands for the excellence in execution and finishing – objects of fine arts with well contextualized inquiries, reaching hybrid objects that add at once functionality, geometry, beauty, historical and emotive memory.
For the esthetician, woodworking is to live in a creative process guided by the observation, to see – re-see – experience with time and dedication, in a way rejecting the acceleration and the prevalent immediacy. To contemplate is the most constant verse of daily life. From this, ideas are born and from them the sketches which generate trials, prototypes, and somewhat later the finished work. Time is not an enemy but an integral part of the process of developing something really pondered and experienced.
Just as the wood carries the memory of the tree that ever lived, with his work Calixto rescues his childhood's memory – and why not of many others? – that, as he did, built their own toys: wooden cars, airplanes, kites...
Nowadays, with this essence and affection, Calixto coordinates the oficinaethos, a carpentry atelier that attends architects, interior designers, art collectors, and museum shops.