Cyborg Daisy
Designer
Marcel Wanders
Marcel Wanders (Boxtel, 1963) graduated with honours from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (ArtEZ Institute of the Arts) in Arnhem in 1988. In 1995 he opened his studio in Amsterdam, quickly coming to worldwide attention in 1996 for his iconic Knotted Chair, which paired high-tech materials with ‘low-tech’ production methods.
Today Marcel is a prolific product and interior designer and art director, with over 1700 projects to his name for private clients and premium brands such as Magis, Alessi, Bisazza, KLM, Flos, Swarovski, Puma, and scores of others.
Regarded by many as an anomaly in the design world, Marcel has made it his mission to “create an environment of love, live with passion and make our most exciting dreams come true”. His work excites, provokes, and polarises, but never fails to surprise due to its ingenuity, daring and singular quest to uplift the human spirit, and entertain.
In his designs, Marcel often mixes innovative materials and techniques with references to well known historical styles and archetypes, so users can easily connect to the pieces, enjoying them for a long time and in doing so create sustainable surroundings.
Marcel’s chief concern is to bring the human touch back to design, ushering in what he calls design’s ‘new age;’ in which designer, craftsperson and user are reunited. In his process, Marcel defies design dogma, preferring instead of focus on holistic rather than technocratic solutions. In Marcel’s universe, the coldness of industrialism is replaced by the poetry, fantasy and romance of different ages, vividly brought to life in the contemporary moment.
In 2001 Marcel co-founded the successful design label Moooi, of which he is also Art Director. Interior projects have become increasingly important in Marcel’s work, embraced because they enable him to envelop people in multi-layered, sensory experiences.
Many of Marcel’s designs have been selected for the most important design collections and exhibitions in the world, including the Museums of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.
Magis
Magis was established in 1976 in the north east of Italy, one of Europe’s most dynamic industrial areas. It was founded by Eugenio Perazza, “a businessman who asks clear design questions that already provide a significant part of the answer, particularly when carefully formulated together with a talented designer” (Giampiero Bosoni, Domus 941, November 2010). The company is a prominent lodestar in the design world.
Its success is based on the desire to provide a broad swathe of users with access to high functional and technological quality products for the home, developed in partnership with major international designers, with a vision of the resulting products that is ethical and poetic as well as aesthetic.
