Marcel Wanders is the eccentric, larger than life personality in the design world. Just by speaking to him one feels his passion and creativity radiate. The Dutch based designer is the lively owner of the furniture maker Moooi and Marcel Wanders, his design studio. From a childhood passion of making gifts for people, he is still enamoring the world with the gifts of his design that light up homes with their chic yet fun playfulness.

RS: What inspired you to become a designer?

 

MW: When I was a kid, I really liked making things. I loved to draw, and I loved to make gifts for people. My mom and dad had a store and so of course things got broken. They’d give stuff to me to fix, I’d love playing around with it, to take it apart and put it back together. I really loved making gifts for people. Finding things, glueing it together and wrapping it nicely. Then I’d get this positive feedback of making things, giving things. Basically that’s what I’m doing to this day. I don’t know who the person is that gets that gift. I do believe I have an idea of what people hope to see in their lives and it’s basically what I’m trying to do and where my design inspiration started.

 

RS: Would you consider what your doing still making gifts for people?

 

MW: In a way, basically I found out there is two super important qualifications to a great gift. One is that if you make a gift and you open that box your like O MY GOD, this is so what I wanted. So me and really such a thing that I like. I’ve proven I know you, I care about you. I know something apparently inherent about you that you haven’t figured. I see that, what you hope for. Wow that is so me. You also think this is something that only he would of thought of, it is so him. Basically a good gift is a celebration of a relationship. That’s what I found out early in my life. It is still something I look to today. I don’t always know the people I make these things for but I believe I can listen to the world, and listen to people. They have wishes, they have dreams, assumptions, fears, powers, if I listen to that I see how I can help them. Make them surprised. That to me is something I use everyday, because I really want to make things that are important to people.

 

RS: Where are you listening from?

 

MW: From my heart, culture, my personality. It is still what I do today.

 

RS: Do you think that the Netherlands affected the way you design at all?

 

MW: Yea I think if you are able that people consider personal, subjective. If you don’t try to just make the best piece, but you try to make your piece. Then your personally is allowed to be present in the piece. It will always be a lot of who we are is determined by your surroundings. So obviously being Dutch is a part of my vocabulary, my thinking, upbringing and shines through the things I do.

RS: What is it about the Netherlands that makes it so unique in terms of Design?

 

MW: The country, the people have always been open minded and welcoming to new ideas type of people. I mean already in the 16 or 1700’s people who had trouble in their own countries came to the Netherlands because they were safe. It is a very egalitarian country, so altogether it makes a huge interest in the world. We were always a small country, and the world is big so we were always out for business. So we want to know the world, and the world is welcome. That is something very Dutch and something we have to protect everyday. That’s important if you are able to listen to other people, to make something for them that is valuable or learn from them that is valuable is a huge distinction.

 

 

RS: You’re one of the world’s most prolific designers, what do you think makes for good design?

 

MW: Designers have to have the ability to tell a story and to be super passionate about people. A designer has to be able to explain what he wants, but also to tell a story and to tell an opinion. To explain what he wants, but also explain what other people want. Has to have a big heart for people and be able to engage with quite a few things.

 

RS: What do you look for when your creating a piece of furniture for instance, what’s the first thing you look at?

 

MW: I like to think that the projects we do, the things we make, they are my children. In terms of making babies I am the mother and the company or clients is the father. We start with finding interesting fathers and you really get the best of genetic formulas in that thing. You don’t make something alone, this thing needs to be made for them. To me it’s super interesting, it gives me an opportunity to make things that are different. Inspires thinking, presumes new ideas, come up with ideas where the question is different. I like to think of my products that way. We look for intelligence, interesting technologies, dont forget day to day me and my team are engineerings. We put screws in the right place, cut through ennificient ways and in the end clients should never think we are engineers. They need to believe we are magicians, poets. Technology becomes part of the beauty. In the end, they can’t be bothered with how this thing is made. They want to feel its amazing, works for them, poetic, shines, grazed to them. It is elegant. The struggle of making, the technology, the effort, you just want to make them disappear into sheer beauty and poetry. That’s what you always want to realize.

 

RS: Now you have two companies correct, you have Marcel Wanders which does interiors and interior design for all sorts of clients. Then you have Moooi?

 

MW: Then I have a hotel, shoe startups. There quite a few things in all my plate but the two big things are for sure is my studio and Moooi.

 

RS: What does your studio do exactly?

 

MW: My studio is a group of 60 people that together in the kind of diversity of people realize new ideas and develop them into maturity with clients.

 

RS: When your designing a room or an environment what do you look for? What are you trying to create?

 

MW: Well what’s interesting to understand we do products and interiors. When I started to do interiors after doing products, I thought it was going to be like product just bigger. When I was drawing up my first interiors I saw that if you do an interior in the way you do products they’ll be very boring. They’ll be completely uninteresting in a way. We really had to find a new working method, a new process, a new philosophy. When your doing product design you have to find a good idea. If you follow that idea meticulously and you feel that idea and you carve away any disruption of it then you get an amazing piece. It’s sharp, it’s clear, it’s clean. You take a piece of marbel, you cut away everything then you have David. Interior design is in a way its opposite. An interior has a morning, an evening, a Friday afternoon, a Sunday afternoon, people in it. An interior can’t have one idea, an interior has a thousand ideas. An interior is like making an opera. People get in, the door is open, a little fluke, then there’s silence, THEN BOOM, there’s a full orchestra, now someone walks on stage, lights are on. That is a complete environment where everything happens at the same time at some point, there is sheer excitement in movement of light, of darkness. All that needs to happen if you want to make a place exciting. A product is really different.

 

 

RS: Do you have a project you are working on that is very close to heart?

 

MW: There is no project that I’m working on that is not close to my heart. That is not a linguistic answer, I really feel that way. I can’t waste my time on things that I don’t care about. My audience will find out that it makes no sense to me.

 

RS: What are some projects right now that you are working on that you want to share and are very excited about?

 

MW: We just started a palace, which is super interesting we never did a palace (before). We are completing a hotel that opens next month that opens in Doha. We are doing the largest hotel in Mallorca. I’m working on a new violin. A new glass chandelier. A cheese scraper. We work on crazy things at the same time.

RS: You really have a diversity of products from cheese scrappers to a Qatari hotel.

 

MW: In a way it’s all the same in a way, but the diversity is huge. It is also because we look for it. I never did a book about the Rijksmuseum, about old art. Who would expect that I would do that. No one is expecting me that I’d do a book. I want that diversity because it keeps me alive. It makes me think. I want to think. I don’t want to do the same thing twice because it’s boring to me. You want to find new challenges in my life. The diversity of our projects is pretty strong. In 2014 I studied at Fountainbleu, I did my MBA. Just because I’m super curious. I want to learn. That’s a project, its a design. I want to design my brain to do things, to think of things in different ways. I am super excited.

RS:Your a super passionate person, where does that passion and drive come from?

 

MW: It comes from knowing what we do here at studio is super important. We are not making chairs, we are making a body of work. That wants to change the face of design. That wants to show there’s another way. We still live in a world still dominated by modernism, we had postmodernism in architecture and design, but we went back to modernism because it’s easy you can calculate what you do. But we can’t go on with modernism. One of the principles of modernism is not looking back but building the future. The past is irrelevant. But if the past is irrelevant to the future, what does that mean for the things I create today. That means for tomorrow there irrelevant. We’ve created a throw away society. We’ve created things with no soul, no mother or father. This is awful, why create things that have no reference, that have no families. How would you do that. Why would you create orphans on an ongoing basis. So what we are trying to make when something is new, it is not only new, it is part of a culture. You have a hard time identify when it’s made. I think it is beautiful if we create projects that are undatable and therefor evergreen. I want to make objects that we can recognize but there is something new about it, something interesting. I want to do new things but that you recognize and you already love them. Why keep old paintings in a museum, because the past is super relevant for us. We have culture and that culture is important. That is one of the pillars of the studio.

 

RS: Why did you choose the NoMad Design District for the Moooi store here in New York?

 

MW: I think for me it was super important to be in New York, New York is still super important center of the world. We were looking for a place in New York for a long time. We felt that this place had great potential, its near to everyone. We felt it was a super cool place and there was some activity that was relevant to us. There were two stores already relevant to us and we felt that if we go there it will attract other like minded companies and it would be a destination. That is what is happening at the moment, more and more companies in design are flocking together to this area which makes it a district and I’m super happy about it. Together we attract a larger audience than alone.

 

RS: It’s crazy what’s going on you see more showrooms, you see the construction.

 

MW: I mean again we saw there was potential. It’s wonderful for cool designers because now you have a street of great design companies. We picked it for that potential. That vibe to be discovered. The position in the city is great. In a certain way very central and easy to get to. We felt this is the place where we are gonna land.

 

RS: Now it’s the NoMad Design District.

 

MW: Yea I’m happy it’s happening, a good part of the compliments have to go to Babak (Hakakian), ddc. They I think were the first and they were the only ones and then we said okay we are gonna join this neighborhood. That’s three, four years ago we decided and super happy now it’s happening. I hope it’s going to be an amazing attraction for a lot of people. There is so much great design.

 

RS: What advice do you have for an aspiring designers today?

 

MW: I think it’s a tough question everyone will find their own way and that’s good. If you really want to be a great designer, the one thing you have to do is have your own thinking. You have to be able and dare to have your own thoughts. To make a distinction other people won’t make and to believe that you’re right. Then you have to follow that thought if it’s true, even if people will tell you it’s stupid. Ultimately that is the only way that you can do things that are fresh, new and different that will lead the world to a better place.