My name is Fernanda Povoa, and this is my Lab.
My work begins in a deeply human place: through observation, intuition, hand sketches, illustrations and dreams.
Before becoming an object, each piece first exists as an image in my mind, then as a line on paper, a fragment, a movement or a form that I feel the need to understand.
The practice is informed by the patterns, structures and technical solutions found throughout the natural world: the ways organisms grow, repeat, adapt, support themselves and occupy space. These hidden systems are not copied literally, but interpreted through a personal visual language.
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Drawings and imagined forms are then translated into sets of rules, lines of code, algorithms and digital recipes. The computer functions as a tool for testing, extending and materialising an idea that already exists in the mind and on paper. The image precedes the code; technology does not originate the work, but helps reveal and develop its internal logic through repeated human decisions and iterations.
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The process eventually returns to the hands. Every piece is assembled, dyed, refined and finished individually in the studio. Illustration, computation, sculpture and material experimentation are not separate stages, but interconnected parts of one continuous practice.
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Povoa Lab is where these worlds meet: a space for translating dreams, observations and imagined organisms into wearable sculptures and light objects. Situated between collectible design, biophilic form and natural history, the works appear familiar yet unknown—as though they emerged from another possible reality.
