“You can only truly contribute something relevant to any environment or group of people if you are learning from them.”

It all started with a ketchup packet. The year was 1986. I had switched to the design course at PUC/Rio after realizing that the dream of being a naval engineer and designing sailboats wasn't for me (it took me three weeks to chicken out when faced with Leithold, a 600-page calculus book written in an alien language). I was in my second semester of industrial design and had to choose a topic for my next project.

That afternoon, in the IAG cafeteria eating a slice of pizza, I found myself battling a ketchup packet (yes, people from Rio commit the heresy of putting ketchup on pizza!), and of course it won!

Completely covered in red, I remembered that a few days earlier I had had another traumatic experience trying to open the aluminum seal of a syrup bottle. Okay, so my topic was chosen. I was going to do a project on smarter packaging.

In the next class, presenting my idea to Ana Branco, now my eternal guru, friend, and mentor, but at that time a teacher who was, to say the least, extravagant in her classroom, with a bonfire on a dirt floor and a tarp covering, she thought the topic could make an interesting project and asked me to bring some packaging references that I considered good inspirations to the next class.

A young boy, still trying to understand the contrast between that hippie environment with that teacher who was half witch, half fairy, and everything that existed in my imagination about what a classroom would be like where I would learn to design stylish chairs and lamps, like the ones I saw in Italian design books, I brought some packaging from imported cookies that my mother bought and that had little drawers that seemed to me the epitome of usability. Why?!

Ana took my precious references, looked at them, looked again, laughed, and threw them into the bonfire! “Kid, are you crazy? You want to start understanding what it means to be a designer by drawing inspiration from these mediocre references? Have you ever thought about the packaging that brought you into the world?”

She was referring to my mother's belly as a super package, protecting when it needs to protect, nourishing and welcoming its contents, and at the exact moment inviting them into an independent life. At that moment, I had an epiphany that would define my life as creative and professional forever. I understood that I could look to nature as an infinite source of inspiration for design solutions.

That same day, I ate a banana and could compare how much more friendly it was compared to the infamous ketchup packet. At that moment, I was discovering “bionics,” now “biomimicry,” which would come to define my professional trajectory. Being the foundation of most of my creative reflections, the original seed of Tátil, the design studio that celebrates its 35th anniversary this year and which would be born a year later in that same tent, cultivated and nurtured by the revolutionary provocations of this incredible woman, whom I so much want to honor today.

Ana Branco, who recently turned 80 and is still active at PUC, was much more than a teacher to me and to her thousands of students in her more than 40 years of career.

Above all, she helped us understand who we truly were. Our true nature, our place of power. In a recent tribute class, on campus, which I and countless other students from various eras organized, it was easy to see in the testimonials how much this was her true role.

In our testimonials about each journey, it became clear that, far more than teaching us methodologies or techniques on how to be good designers, Ana challenged us, through her "methodological tricks," to immerse ourselves in diverse spaces such as schools, hospitals, academies, or any other place where we could interact in depth with people passionate about what they did.

These were the intermediaries. Teachers, doctors, therapists, or other professionals who had the goal of transforming realities, with whom we would ally ourselves to, above all, learn and, only then, if everything went well, contribute through design ideas and solutions that made a difference.

Ana always believed that only through coexistence can we truly capture the creative potential that exists in all spaces. Always working to catalyze what already exists in abundance and not in scarcity. Always defending that true learning is much more in the process, in the journey, and not in the results.

In these profound journeys of great dedication, with many stumbles, challenges, smiles, and tears, we had the opportunity to come into contact with our limitations, our abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, our true character. A great existential laboratory where the project was merely a pretext for advancing in our understanding of what motivates us, how we see the world, what we believe in, what makes our eyes shine! Self-knowledge in our veins.

Ana taught us design thinking long before this methodology was presented to the world by Stanford and IDEO. Designing "with" and not "for someone," prototyping and experimenting all the time, absolute empathy with those who truly know the subject you are interested in. Listening more than speaking.

Never arrive with the arrogance of thinking you know what the other person needs, or that you are the "magical problem solver." You can only truly contribute something relevant to any environment or group of people if you are learning from them. If the exchanges are genuine in an environment of trust and complicity.

Ana always said that the perfect "clients" for you to evolve as a designer are children. They have no qualms about telling you they didn't like something you proposed, and only in this way is it possible to understand what will truly be relevant to someone. Clients who are sensitive to feedback only compromise the process of evolving ideas.

I came to understand what this meant during the four projects I did with Ana. One of them was with deaf children at the National Institute of Deaf Education (INES), where I spent more than a year learning from them what multisensory learning was. This was certainly an important influence on the work we did on the identity of the Rio Paralympic Games and also on the opening and closing ceremonies that I co-directed with Vik Muniz and Marcelo Rubens Paiva.

It's been more than 38 years since that blessed ketchup packet that changed my life. It was at that stall that I understood and felt who Fred was. What truly interested me. It was there that I learned to look at the world in a different way, keeping alive the perspective of the children I worked with on so many projects.

It was in that tent that I met some of my lifelong friends. It was there that I understood that the true role of a designer is to be an agent connecting ideas and knowledge among people. It was there that I understood that results are always proportional to involvement. There's no way around it. If you want something special to happen in your life, you have to invest your best energy consistently and intensely.

I passed this on to the more than 600 students I had during the almost 20 years I taught in the same design course from which I graduated. I passed it on to my daughters, who were also Ana's students in the tent.

Now, on November 6th, during the week celebrating the 30th anniversary of the postgraduate design program at PUC, we will launch the documentary "Flying Tent," showing a little of what I'm sharing with you today. To honor the absolutely revolutionary perspective that Ana Branco continues to offer her students, so that more people can come to know it.

Directed by Fernanda Heinz, the same director of the incredible "Biocentrics," the documentary seeks to capture some of the strength, delicacy, and original poetics of the "teacher of teachers" and all her ability to contribute to the formation of individuals who, through passion and creativity, continue to believe that it is possible to change the world.

‍