PHILIA LAB: FIRST STEPS OF THE PHILIA SCHOOL

At the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Galerie Philia presents Philia Lab: First Steps of the Philia School, in partnership with ArtRio. Following its first presentation at the Palácio de Cristal in Petrópolis, the exhibition brings together a series of sculptural furniture pieces imagined by children from local public schools and developed through a collective process involving design, craftsmanship, education, and environmental awareness.

Philia Lab was created in Petrópolis as a space for experimentation and shared learning. Children occupy the centre of the creative process. They observe the surrounding landscape, draw, formulate ideas, construct prototypes, choose materials, and participate in the transformation of their proposals into physical objects.

Developed by Galerie Philia with Brazilian designer Gisela Simas, SOS Serra, Guga Casari, and a group of local master artisans, the project uses reclaimed wood from fallen trees collected in the region. Curves, marks, and irregularities are preserved as active elements of the creative process, connecting each piece to the material memory and natural landscape of Petrópolis.

Rather than receiving predetermined forms, the children are encouraged to make decisions, reconsider their ideas, and recognise their own gestures in the completed works. Designers and artisans transmit knowledge and techniques without replacing the children’s imagination. Through this exchange, craftsmanship becomes a shared language circulating between generations.

At Philia Lab, design is not presented as a finished form to be contemplated. It is understood as something learned through observation, experimentation, dialogue, and making. The child does not simply accompany the process. The child initiates it.

This new chapter grows out of Philia & Kids, the philanthropic initiative founded and curated by Ygaël Attali to introduce younger generations to design through collective creation. Its first edition, Design Brut, was developed with primary school children in Breil sur Roya, France, using local olive wood. The following project, Chantiers Partagés, brought together students from the César Franck middle school in Palaiseau and designer Frédéric Saulou around the reuse of Meulière stone extracted during the construction of the Grand Paris Express.

In Petrópolis, this trajectory has acquired a permanent local foundation. What began as a series of workshops is now evolving into Philia Lab, a continuing space for research, production, and encounter. It constitutes the first concrete step towards the creation of the Philia School, a permanent school dedicated to art, craftsmanship, and design, rooted in its territory and accessible to children from local public schools.

The presentation at the MAC Niterói gives this process a new institutional dimension. Within Oscar Niemeyer’s architecture, overlooking Guanabara Bay, objects born from the observation of nature return to a space where landscape, material, and form remain in constant dialogue.

All proceeds generated by the works will be reinvested in the development of the project, supporting future workshops and the gradual construction of the Philia School. More than an exhibition, Philia Lab is the beginning of a long term educational structure in which children, designers, educators, and artisans can continue to imagine, make, and learn together.