Marcel Wanders: visionary with a rear-view mirror

With his designs, Marcel Wanders builds bridges between the past and the future.

With his designs Marcel Wanders (1963, Boxtel) bridges between past and future. White and black bridges, because in his work he also gives room to the dark sides of his existence. “The pain is mainly that I don't decide: I will never do this damn thing again!”, he tells MASTERS.Text: Bart-Jan Brouwer | Online editing: Mical Joseph

Twenty-five years ago you made your definitive breakthrough as a designer with the Knotted Chair, a chair knotted from strong rope and covered with a layer of epoxy. If you take that as a starting point, where are you now?

“I understand that the spectator takes that as a starting point, because that is the first time they have seen me. I see it differently myself. For me, the starting point is the moment I decided I had a vision and wanted to believe in it.” 

Does such a vision change over the years?

“I've had a few moments in my life when I was confronted with that. Once, when I was cleaning out my mother's house, I found all kinds of pieces of paper that I had written in the past - I was really a thinker who wrote down his thoughts. Also in preparation for my performance Pinned Up (2014) in the Stedelijk Museum, I went back in time. My conclusion: nothing has changed, the fundamentals are still the same. These are the points where your interests and thoughts lie. Over time you build up cones: more information, more certainties, more evidence. Those cones merge into each other and here and there a new point pops up. That is the model of development. It's not like there's another man standing there now. The doubts, insecurities and hunches of the past have not gone away. I have thought about it and looked for evidence. What fundamentally interested me hasn't really changed. However, over the years I have come to understand it more in terms of content: oh wait, so that's how it works!”Knotted Chair (1996)Cappellini New Antiques

You face the future while looking in the rearview mirror.

“I am not only interested in my daughter's life, but also in that of my mother. I want them to hold hands. My awareness only increases when I live both ways. It is a shame if we cut off every day what we were yesterday. Because that also makes what we do today unimportant. In Brabant, parents say to their children: 'If you want to learn to whistle, you have to eat the crusts of your bread.' This is what one of my first works is about, Narrative of Children and Bathwater from 1985 (printed in 2001 as A Tale of Children and Bathwater; ed.). The residents of a village complain about the hard crusts. This goes so far that the baker decides to make bread without crusts from now on, but he only makes bread with crusts for himself. Years later, a little boy walking through the village is attracted by a special sound. He goes up
turns off the sound and sees the baker produce that sound with pursed lips.
The boy runs to his mother: 'Mom, come! You have to hear this! The baker makes a wonderful sound with his lips.' The mother explains that this is called 'whistling' and that everyone used to be able to do that, when people still ate bread with crusts. Ultimately, everyone will start eating bread with crusts again because they really want to be able to whistle.”

The moral of the story…

“You don't realize what you are destroying if you don't cherish the past. Look at the invention of the light bulb by Thomas Edison. At the time of innovation, there is a strong interest in moving away from candlelight, because it all entails risks. Edison wanted controllable, bright light. It then falls into the hands of engineers and is made as perfect as possible. A logical path. In retrospect you can say that there was very little respect for history and a lot of faith in the future. With more respect for the past, it could have been decided that a lamp, for example, spread a dancing light instead of a constant light. Not a dead light but a living, more natural light. I consciously go back to such moments in time – Lost and found by innovation I call that process -, search for such inventions, look back with love and compassion at the inability of the past. In hindsight I can think differently about that, I have that luxury. As a designer, I don't make objects that save lives – it's not like I make braking systems for Tesla – but that keep our culture moving. You have innovation and cultural innovation. We do cultural innovation. And I think that is much more important, because cultural innovation drives innovation. We think and want first, then we execute. My kind of designs changes the relationship between people and the environment. With the things I make I give the public a different connection with the built environment. Because people don't like aging, designers mainly create metaphors about youth and beauty. Because of that baby face fixation everything looks as if it was just born. I have decided not to go along with that. You just shouldn't make things that seem new, don't idolize the new. New in itself is not a problem, but it is if it is the most important qualification: then you have a completely unsustainable product. There is no quality that is less durable. New is about now. For our culture, newness has been the most important quality for a hundred years. It is the foundation of a throwaway culture. We really have to make new things unimportant.”

Do you make what your audience wants or what you want?

“I try to make work that says who I am, explains what I want to say, makes my love for the world visible and meets people's needs. As a little boy I loved making presents for people. Then I glued something together for my aunt and then I gave it to her wrapped in a bow. She thought I was the sweetest guy. I understood early on that a good gift makes someone feel seen. If it is truly made for someone with love and respect, then the person for whom it is intended will feel that. Just like my work does. Actually, I make gifts for the world. My work is a celebration of the relationship between me and the world.”

MASTERS Magazine #46

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A tale of children and bathwater (1985)