The Argentinean designer Martín Churba has a long experience in the World of fashion and design. Born in Buenos Aires on the October 3rd. 1970, he first studied publicity and graphic design, but finally discovered his ruling passion for the textile that would lead him to re-create fabrics in an original and playful way. This would be the beginning of a successful career as avant-garde designer.
Design is the key word. His attitude to textiles is the password: to build a new and original approach to the textile starting from the weave and add them to other areas of design. His enterprise, Tramando, means “weaving” in Spanish. But it also means “plotting” because there is always something happening in his headquarter of Buenos Aires. Under the same roof, a workshop for experimentation and creation, Martin has got together several design units: textile design and development, closing design and also the design of objects for the house. His avant-garde collections are created in Argentina and exported to USA and Japan. Tramando has its flagship store in Buenos Aires.
Following the concept of weaving nets, Martín has designed a social program together with a cooperative of unemployed people. The success of the program “pongamos el trabajo de moda” (let’s make working fashionable) is that it has been able to integrate different social actors in one and the same project. At present, the social department of Tramando “Trama Social” is developing a program that supports the handicraft activities of aboriginal communities located in the north of the country.
Weaving the future; Martín Churba
Martín Churba:
“My family history has linked me to the world of design. On the one hand there is the well known ‘Churba’ or ‘Ch’ decoration and upholstery shop on the corner of Cabildo and Juramento Street. The shop also sells objects d’art and was a leader in the design movement 30 or more years ago in Buenos Aires. The business belonged to my father’s family. As a result of ‘Ch’ many of my uncles, my father and my grandfather made their way in the world of design and decoration. This same family gave rise to firms such as Natan and Gris Dimensión (Grey Dimension). I could say that, in some instances, I was surrounded by design, by architecture, by aesthetics; I was put through the sieve of the world of design.
My mother’s family also possesses a long history which is linked to the world of aesthetics and design. On the one hand my grandfather, Vittorio, kept an ‘haute couture ‘shop, ‘high fashion’ as it was called in those days. The clothes were very elegant, evening clothes and very fashionable dresses. The shop was situated on the corner of Talcahuano and Santa Fe Avenue. My mother and my uncles became, in a natural way, familiar with fashion and design. My mother became the initiator and owner of Lemma , a business which dealt with children’s clothing. Lemamu was important in Argentina in the 70’s and 80’s as it introduced colour and sportswear, an informal, casual way of dressing for children, which was something new at the time. So if I were to state that I have always been nosing amongst rag bags, that would be an entirely sincere statement and in no way an exaggeration.”
Martín Churba has developed more than one career, all of which helped to feed his passion for things creative and artistic. When he was fifteen and undergoing his third year at Secondary School, he took up a course on Advertising and Graphic Design offered by the Panamerican School of Art. He never finished this course but, as Churba states, this helped him develop his talents for illustration. At the same time he began studying Drama at Agustín Aleso’s School of Dramatic Arts and, later on, he broadened his experience with Augusto Fernandez. Seven years of Drama studies taught him much about expressive movement and was sound preparation for a career in acting. Churba himself stated, “Of my studies in Art, Design and Drama, I believe it is this last subject that turned out to be the most important.”
He gained his experience in textiles, basically, working in the field, initially in printing and later, for three years, learning the techniques of serigraphy. Thus the makings of his career were largely self-taught. When he was 26 he took up studies in the Pirilidiano Pueyrredón Art School for a period of three years, concentrating mainly on Painting. “It was here that I discovered the importance of pictorial elements and their expressive artistic importance.”
Weaving the idea
The project started, Churba explained, in the open air. It was summer and there were quantities of flags flying at a dock-side in Tigre. “Noticing how the cloth and the colours complemented each other with the aid of the wind he commenced gathering the threads of his ideas into a new web.” Design was the key word. The attitude to textiles was the password. He decided to add innovative textile ideas to other areas of design. And to do this he took on board not only designs by designers but also the development of machine technology and research with materials testing within its own environment. Tramando was therefore, to become more than a brand or a sales channel for designs. It was to become a design business with an integrated factory for exclusive products, an office for ongoing consultations (all-inclusive, for the individual or for firms), it would forge production partnerships with individuals and with institutions, links with industry and the academic world and outsource ecologically and socially.
“Tramando was born in 2003. My capital was small, large for a young man of 30 but limited for a large business; and I started a business project which, rather than become a workshop for repetitions, was to be the generation, the birth of a workshop for experimentation and creation.
This business had to reflect the proposal of seeing textiles as the basis of the inspired weaving of essential ideas. An outlook with at least two viewpoints. That which is outside and that which is on the inside, the context and the particular, in the same way as the loom is prepared with its horizontal axis which gives the framework and a vertical axis which provides its individuality, the weft, and the pattern. What we want to do is explore this scheme of things, deepen our knowledge and rewrite it, work at the forge of design and individuality of a country which is at a new stage in more than one sense.
Weaving the organization
Tramando is a business which joins various strands of design. In the same building, an established group designs and develops products (clothing, textiles and equipment) later to be produced by means of agreements with industry and eventually to be sold on the high street. Tramando is made up of four business projects: garments, textiles, objects for home use and the consultancy division.
The consultancy is a division of the business that offers services, know-how and training in the area of design. It employs our own or externally contracted designers in accordance with client requirements and needs.
The most critical area of the business, Design and Production, is run by Martín Churba himself. The area is, in effect, broken down into three: Design, Development and Production.
The design area includes a team of designers who develop new garment designs, along with the technology and machinery which aid the work of the designer.
The Development area includes Tramando’s textile laboratory where materials to be employed for different designs are scrutinized. Different materials are examined employing varied techniques and technologies.
Finally, the area of Production, which is largely outsourced by means of agreements with artists, designers, firms and institutions. Nicola Constantino, the artist and painter is the designer, along with Churba, of the Skin line.
Although it can be argued that Tramando has had no further social impact beyond that which it has had on those who are in a position to purchase its apparel, Martín and his team have been enthusiastic about taking part in a project which highlights the qualities of creative development and the work ethic of the unemployed. They have therefore, jointly with the NGO Poder Ciudadano (People Power) and the La Juanita area Cooperative (set up by the Workers Unemployment Cooperative of La Matanza) thought through a textile venture. The project’s intention is to reinforce the idea of the social, civic and political value of work.
Martín Churba, considering the lab/office coat to be of suitable symbolic value (also used in Argentina by Primary School children), was instrumental in carrying this idea through with the 200 people who were involved in the seventh edition of “Buenos Aires Fashion Week”.
