Marcel Wanders

Smiling and upbeat, that’s how we would characterise him. He is one of the most respected designers in the world. Marcel Wanders was born in the Netherlands. Throughout his career, he has designed and created pieces that will go down in history as the best in contemporary design. During his interview with TRENDS, he spoke about his career, his passion for design, inspiration, sophistication of thought, his philosophy of life and about Moooi. Marcel seeks, with his creativity, to create things that have not yet been done. He is truly an icon of international design. Thousands of projects have passed through his hands. And we believe that he will not stop there, because this creative being has so much more to reveal. At 60 years old, you could say that he feels fulfilled, yet he wants to continue to surprise the world, because he will continue in his quest to create "the great undone”.

When did your passion for design, product design and architecture arise? 
Since I was very young, I was always making things. And I always look at the movies on how things are made. Just to create something out of nothing, it’s something that I love. Over time, I think I became a bit more ambitious with my passion for making stuff. So, at some point I wanted to create, make things that would surprise me and surprise other people. I want to do things that haven’t been done before. For me, just to make something beautiful doesn’t make me happy. I’m most happy about the projects that really haven’t been done before. Of course, some things hasn’t been done before at all and others are less groundbreaking, but for me there lies the passion. 

You founded the Marcel Wanders Studio many years ago. But last year you announced that you would indefinitely 'close' this project in your life. A year after that decision, do you still stand by the idea?
I stand unshaken. It's sometimes misunderstood, people think that I’m stepping back or want to do less. Instead, I want to do a lot, but I want to do it alone, so I have to let go the projects that need a large studio, but I’m working hard with pleasure! In Marcel Wanders Studio, we had between 60 and 80 brilliant creatives from all over the world. They didn’t come to Amsterdam because they need a job or for the good weather. They left family and friends because they want to work with me on a level that alone they can’t reach. I can lift them to a level, so they are surpassing themselves. That’s the promise that we give each other. They work with me and I lift them up. But that is a heavy task, and I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to do the same thing for too long. I want to do projects that I haven’t done before, projects that are going to surprise me. To surprise the world, I first have to surprise myself.

So, is your goal to have space for creativity and not to work only on the requests of your clients?
I have loved my clients dearly and they’ve given me fantastic opportunities to work on things that are amazing. But also, I feel like I don’t need clients to create. There's a few that I really love to work for and then there's a lot of things I can do without clients. I just have my own activities going on, they are really wonderful and they need me also, like I need them. I also feel I made the right choice because I know that the people in my studio, they’ve all found their way. We closed the project of the studio in fact in April this year. I invited all the people of the studio to come to Milano, so that everybody sees that everybody’s found their place, that everybody’s happy again. People have found new studios or have set up their own studios.  

Over the years, you have been invited many times to create authentic works of art. Do you feel proud to have achieved such a level of excellence in the world of design? 
I'm super happy, not only about the pieces that I made, but really how a lot of the pieces, have been able to prove, explain and transmit my philosophy. There’s a lot of thinking that goes behind the objects and the spaces that I’ve created. I’m proud of the products and interiors, but really more about the sophistication of thought, my philosophy and the cultural change that I’ve been able to dream up and promote through the years. 

As a designer, what do you most like to design?
The real excitement in products is if you can do something that hasn’t been done. For example, a chair is not per se interesting, but a chair that hasn’t been done is interesting. I’m not interested in the subject; I am interested in the expression of an idea. If there is an idea that deserves my attention, it is my task to find it. 

"Just to create something out of nothing, it’s something that I love”

You have worked with big brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Audi, Fendi, Flos, Vista Alegre, Vondom, among others. Is it a huge responsibility to create something for such prestigious brands? 
Yes, like it is for Vuitton or Flos to work with prestigious designers that they really want to work with. Based on mutual respect and interest, both want to try, together, to realise something that alone they cannot realise. And, when both personalities listen and speak, if both ‘genetic formulas’ intertwine the chromosomic constellation that we have around us, if both work hard and use their talent, something great can come out, something unexpected, something different, something that alone neither one cannot do. This is the purpose of the designer, to be his own source, his own concept, his own idea. I am always surprised that so many things look alike. I think it’s beautiful if you have your own identity and that counts for designers and that counts for the clients also. The more they have their own identity, the more difficult yet fulfilling it is to work together.

Where do you find inspiration to create all that you do?
Inspiration is a word that is misused so badly by so many people in creation. I often read that they read a book and they’re inspired, or they saw a movie and they’re inspired, or they were on a boat trip... So, basically these are people without idea until they find one, and often it’s not theirs. In my world, when I was 10 years old, I watched movies where knights were attacking seven headed dragons because they were inspired by their love for a princess. That’s true inspiration. Not someone that is inspired for red because they just saw a Ferrari. And that true inspiration is a burning fire inside of me. There’s that kind of burning knowledge that you’re here for a reason and your life is going to make a difference. There is this huge monstrous problem, and you have to attack it. It doesn’t matter the time you’re going to spend on it, you’re going to give it everything you got because it’s important and because you have a philosophy that you stand for, because you think is going to make the world a better place. You work on your philosophy, over time it gets stronger and more sophisticated, stronger and worth love and passion. Now, that is inspiration. And that comes from inside. It’s something that you make by hard work and based on a personal philosophy. Once you have a philosophy, you have your problem, you now have your big challenge: how to make that philosophy work; how to present that philosophy; how to make that speak to the world; how to make that something that can live? Now, that is the question and so, while searching and working hard, the answers are coming slowly from outside. During my 35 year of unwavering passion, I have seen the world move. 

How do you keep your mind strong and focused, and stay on your own path, when a client asked you to do something, to satisfy them?
My mind is always strong and focussed yet I am not alone on my path, but together with my client. To ignore that companion on a journey is not only dumb but also unrespectful. I love my clients if they contribute with their wisdom and expertise to our project. It is my task not to use my stubbornness but my creativity to mould our project in such a way that we both get more than we expected. 

How did the idea to create Moooi come about?
Nobody wanted to make my designs, so I started to make my own. 

And why the name Moooi?
I have always loved the Audi logo, because it's just such a beautiful one. And I learned from that, that it will be great to have a name that is a logo. Then we were in the time that we thought that all these new websites were super important and so that we had a .com that we still could get. And so, I had to find a name that was bit unusual so we could still protect it well and that was visually so strong that we didn’t need a logo. But the name became the logo. So, it was not only a linguistic name, but also a visual name and an acoustic name. And so, at some point I put the three O’s on a line, because I never saw three O’s on a line and I thought that’s cool. It's not Audi but it’s three O’s. It's visually striking. It’s linguistically striking. And then I had to just find out what to put surrounding it. Zooi, which means rubbish in the Netherlands, was mooted, which I thought was not a great idea. Then, mooi, which means beautiful. And so, I thought, why not? Mooi with two O’s means beautiful, so with three it means... and the good thing is nobody knows that word abroad, so it means kind of nothing, which I think is always the best, but in Holland it’s kind of a funny thing. And so, we became Moooi. It’s funny, at some point we wrote Moooi, and instead of an O, I drew an eye, so then Moooi was written M, and the four ‘eyes/I’s’!

"To surprise the world, I first have to surprise myself”

What message are you aiming to get across with the brand’s concept? 
It’s up to the world to have an opinion about it. As a designer for products and interiors, let’s say, I think we are responsible for nurturing and managing in as good as possible the relationship between people and their artificial surrounding. That’s the relationship we must nurture. If you’re not living in a forest, then you are living in an artificial surrounding. I think the relationship between us and the artificial surrounding, in my opinion, is f*cked up badly. And to a large extent that is because of design, because we have created a philosophy that is ridiculous. A modernist tradition has created a philosophical context for our surroundings that is very short-sighted and we need to repair that, we have to find another way to deal with our surroundings. Designers must lead the road because we have also led the road away from a healthy relationship between us and our artificial surrounding. With modernism we’ve told ourselves that the past is irrelevant for the future. We have said that if you design something you don’t look to the back, you look forward only. But if the past is not relevant for the future, what does it mean for the things we create today? That tomorrow they are irrelevant. We are throwing away our ideas every day and this is what has been happening in the world for a long time now. The connection between us and our surrounding is fundamentally temporary. It’s something that I've been fighting all my life. Start in the past when designing the future. Trying to have conversations with designers around the world to embrace the antiques of yesterday and to create the antiques for tomorrow today. I mean, ultimately the goal of designer is to give as much as possible value for the longest of time for the least of energy and materials, and cost. This is the fundament of design. It’s not what we’ve done. It’s not what we do. 

How do you include sustainability in the pieces you make? 
When I left school in 1988, in the Netherlands, we had a group of creators and they were gathering under the name ‘eternally yours’ and they were studying the longevity of products. How could products grow old gracefully. They were foremost a technocratic group of designers from the technical university in Delft. We worked a lot on the choice of materials, on the consumption of energy, whether objects were able to be repaired to be dismantled. I understood all these things and I learned a lot from it. I use it, but I also knew that this was not going to be my contribution to the design industry. This was the material and technical part of this conversation, but my conversation is about the psychology of it. The poetry of it, if you want. And of course, I would also use the technology that they were developing because at the end, secretly, I’m also an engineer. But that’s not what I’m telling the world, to the world I’m telling them I’m a magician, I’m a poet. I’m doing these crazy things, I don’t know, these things just pop out of thin air. Because that is my conversation. With my poetry and magic, I build a cultural model and a philosophy that is truly more sustainable. I am trying to change the relationship between us and the artificial world, advocating it to be more durable, more balanced. To meet the sustainability demands based on a relational perspective, our relationship with the world. If we have a house that is full of plastic cups and throw away furniture and throw away ceramics, our lives become throw away lives. If you put your family pictures on the sideboard, your world will become different. 

How do you manage to come up with and create unique and distinctive pieces day after day. 
The question that I ask myself, every day, every hour, every minute, is the primary question of my life. If that question is big enough, then it can find a lot of connections, right? If it’s a smaller question, for example: how can I make a nice chair? Then there’s a lot of things on your part that you cannot deal with, right? What do you do? But if the question is: how can I improve the relationship which we as a culture have with our artificial surrounding, then there is an endless number of things you can do, right? It’s endless what you can do. Always search for the biggest problem you can handle. 

Do you feel, that with your vision, and that with Moooi, you are making a difference? 
I think Moooi is making a difference on a lot of levels. I mean if you smile in the morning when you walk outside and you meet someone you make a difference, right? So, we all make a difference, every day, every hour. If you smile, I get happy. So, we all do it, all the time, and also Moooi does it. Could it be more? Yes. Could it be a lot less? Yes. What is the result of Moooi? A lot of people enjoy the works. Let me put it another way, in a more interesting way, I think. I am a designer. Sometimes you meet these people that don’t know design so well. And, they’re like: ‘yeah, yeah, I like it, it’s beautiful, but it’s all so expensive.’ And I’m like: ‘you don’t get it. I’m sorry, it’s not expensive, it’s for free.’ And they’re like: ‘are we talking about design? Design’s for free?’ I mean, you’re now going to publish this text, right? And we do this conversation. I have my thoughts that I build meticulously over the last 50 years. You will take the time to write this piece. You’re going to put it online or, so far as I know, it’s going to appear in your magazine. There are going to be photos with it of works that I’ve made. We’re going to take a nice photo and maybe we’ll tell a nice story. People can read it. They can like this story. They can like the sofa they see. They’re even allowed to hate that sofa. They’re even allowed to go to Milano and see that sofa, make a selfie on it and post on their website that they hate it. They can do what they want; they can use it for their brain; they can hang up; they can tell their friends about it; they can even say "I’m amazing because I saw that sofa”. They can do anything what they want with this sofa that we give to them for free. You are telling a story about it. We do everything and they can just have everything for free. The only thing that is not for free in design is the ownership, which is the least significant  part of design. How many people are going to buy this sofa? Maybe 50 per year. How many people are going to see that sofa, have an opinion about that sofa? Maybe a million. And so, for a million people it’s for a free and then for 50 they exchange some money for the ownership. How is design not for free? My Knotted Chair, it’s been published I think more than a billion times, printed more than a billion times. We made, I think, 1000 in total. That’s it. A lot of people have seen it, been inspired by it. If you buy a magazine on design, it’s not because you want a sofa, because you want to buy a sofa. No. You’re just excited. You think: "Oh my God, this is so cool! I never saw this colour. This is interesting. I should maybe look into this and more.” It gives you ideas. It makes you understand who you are. Who you will become in the future. Because you’re starting to project yourself inside the world that you’re reading about. And you maybe have an idea: "I could do a better life if I do this or if I don’t do that”. So, all that is for free. And now they’re complaining that it’s expensive. No, it’s for free. And so Moooi is doing a lot of that. We give a lot for free and we have enough sales so that we can keep doing that, which is beautiful, and I hope we can do that for a long time, so that we will still be able to communicate our love for your surroundings, continuously.

You have a lot of experience of life and a wonderful philosophy of life. You have created a lot, but of course you still have very much to give to the world, so what are your aims? What do you still want to show to the world and how do you want to be remembered.
Two questions: "what am I planning to do from here onwards” and the other "if I die, what is the leftover of this energy over time in the place”. I’ll answer the latter first. I think I have tried to be honest and speak about and communicate about a philosophy that is trying to make us all happier in a world that is full of artificial surroundings and to do that in such a way that we can create more value out of less "cost” for longer time. And I’ve tried to do that in all kinds of little ways. Whether it was in the concept of imperfection or the concept of the new antiques or all kinds of directions that I have found while creating the works and conversations and also in the connection that I made with people. People in my studio, my clients, my friends. And this, I think, is my motto in life: "I’m here to create an environment of love, live with passion and make my most exciting dreams come true”. It’s a mouthful. I’ve made this motto when I was maybe 30 or so. I’ve changed nothing on that motto ever and it’s still my motto in every situation that I am active in. And then, if it says create an environment of love that not only the objects and spaces, it also concerns my studio, my family, my friends, and all other groups I take part in. It’s really a life philosophy. It’s this motto that I live by. And I hope that I’ve been able to do that to an extent that it’s remarkable, recognisable and unforgettable.