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Design Miami/, the last of the must attend events on the annual design calendar is here again. Taking place in the glam locales of Miami from December 3-6 this year-Design Miami/ will once again put up an extravaganza with design industry’s hottest designers, gallery owners, buyers, design connoisseur and journalists. Expect gorgeous glitterati, cocktail parties and rocking design with exorbitant price tags. Wonder if the credit crunch will have any effect on the prices of the limited-edition pieces this year!

We’ll be bringing you a special series of reports about all that’s happening in Miami next week.

Brazilian design duo the Campana Brothers win the Designer of the Year at Design Miami/ 2008

Fernando and Humberto Campana (Photo credit: Cassio Vasconcellos)

Humberto and Fernando Campana will receive the prestigious Designer of the Year Award at this year’s Design Miami/. In keeping with Design Miami/ tradition, the Campana brothers will create an installation titled Diamantina designed exclusively for the December show to be presented within the central courtyard of the fair’s new temporary structure designed by New York architects Aranda\Lasch.

Sketches of Diamantina, the original will be unveiled during the event.

Diamantina, will represent an evolution of their TransPlastic series, which was unveiled at Albion Gallery in London in 2007. Using the native Brazilian plant Apuí, which grows on and eventually chokes rainforest trees, TransPlastic designs feature this rattan-like fiber woven around ready-made plastic garden chairs and other plastic objects, such as discarded toys, dolls, flip-flops and tires. Like the rainforest trees, the man-made objects are almost entirely swallowed up by the organic material, symbolizing nature’s triumph over the synthetic world. The Campana brothers will expand on this concept at Design Miami/, introducing native Brazilian amethyst crystals into the weave-structure, creating a series of biomorphic islands that visitors will be encouraged to sit on and explore. The combination of the colorful crystals and woven grass fiber will celebrate nature as an essential building block and touchstone of design.

Say the Campana brothers about the design, “This project grows out of the TransPlastic series, where we have sought the purity of form inspired by grottos and caves. It is our own journey to the center of earth, like Jules Verne’s book. Complementing this idea, Diamantina is built in a way that the seats are sculpted along the form creating a new mode of comfort and interaction. They add, “The inspiration for the name alludes to the precious stones incrusted into the piece, and is also the name of a small town in the central part of Brazil. There, all different kinds of stones and crystals are sold like candy on the street markets. The city is ugly and seems as if it was lost in time, continuing to live quietly on the heart of Brazil. By its mixture of materials, both poor by the wicker and precious by the combination with the natural amethyst, as the city, Diamantina piece evokes the same sensation of long forgotten poetry.”

In addition to their Designer of the Year installation, the Campana Brothers are also designing a lounge for principal sponsor HSBC Private Bank, which traditionally offers a VIP lounge for collectors and special guests at Design Miami/ and at Design Miami/Basel.