What the press, or Marcel himself, say(s) about Marcel Wanders



Identity (ae), November 2007 (50 design icons)
Intro: If Philippe Starck is the Groucho Marx of design then Wanders is the Elvis Presley. With a rock – star like image, Wanders eschews austere minimalist concepts to create more whimsical and decorative products. The ubiquitous Dutch designer who has designed everything from furniture to audio equipment, counts among his patrons, pop-star Beyoncé Knowles and hip-hop king Jay-Z.

Financial Times (US) , October 2007 Nicole Swengley
Intro: Marcel Wanders and the Moooi company he co-owns have made contemporary Dutch design synonymous with exuberant creativity. His latest collection feature sculptures and a novel take on Delft porcelain. –

Grand Designs (UK) September 2007
‘Nowadays people don’t just have things because they need them, they have things because they love them. That’s my vision.’
‘ I’m trying to do something that makes you feel like life is exploding. If that doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t make sense’

Design Quarterly (AU) Autumn 2007
Intro: Marcel Wanders is, without a doubt, one of the legendary larger-than-life designers of our time. He captivates his audience with magic, revolution, theft, philanthropy and most prominently some good, old fashioned, rib-tickling -
‘ I think humor is a beautiful way to get connected to people and to get their attention for the things I really like’

Icon (UK), August 2007
‘Design is not as it seems today- just a style!! It makes no sense to still follow the rules of ancient machinery. We can no longer fall in total awe at a tube being bent. We can no longer tell our audience that a product is better because it is easier to make it! Today the industry is able to follow humanity and make its most exciting dreams reality.
As we designers have to represent our public and their dreams instead of the machine and the anachronistic political dogmas it represents. We have to challenge the industry so they will learn to follow instead to lead.
It is on humanity that the design of the future must be built. With love, passion and poetry we will take design to new heights.’

Identity (ae) July 2007
Intro: As one of the pioneering members of the seminal design collective Droog in the 1990s, which put the Netherlands on the global design radar, and as the founder of Moooi, which promotes exceptional talent who create the extraordinary, Wanders has become a hero to many emerging designers.”

Belle (AU) June – July 2007 – Kirsty de Garis
Intro: (…) Marcel Wanders is one of the brightest stars on the international design scene. His portfolio includes cutting-edge work on hotels, restaurants, accessories brands and books, plus for influential Moooi collection.

‘I think that’s what design is: you make connection between things that are not connected yet’. Marcel Wanders

Whitewall (USA) Summer 2007 Josephine Minutillo
Intro: Larger-than-life designer Marcel Wanders burst onto the scene over a decade ago – and he’s been shaking things up in the design world ever since. –
‘ We’ve created a world of design that is larger and larger, therefore we have to aim higher and higher’
‘ I’ve tried all my life not to have a style. Now, if I’m really honest, I give myself more freedom to work with a sense of style than I did before’

Men’s Vogue (US) May-June 2007
‘I want to make sure we live in a world which is super fantastic. I like the material to decide for itself what it wants to be. The material knows better how it can look beautiful’

Marcel about HE speaker boxes: ‘Why, for God’s sake, are speaker boxes square? Why? Speakers themselves are always round. It’s probably because the machines cut straight lines. That is the automatic pilot of the designer, to make things in an easy way. I think that’s terrible. You deserve far better. You deserve the best. Life is really boring enough’

Elle Décor (in) April – May 2007
‘Of course I want to change the world. People who say they can’t under estimate themselves’.

Home Beautiful (AU) May 2007
‘ I always try to concentrate on durability. I create objects that will continue to be relevant, things that people will keep for a lifetime’
‘In the past the industry wasn’t capable of creating elaborate objects, but today we need to do more for our audience. Design should be driven by humanity, not technology’.
‘If I have any basic motivation it’s to inspire, so my biggest project is my life and I will make it a masterpiece’

The Sydney Morning Herald (AU), March 2007
‘I think these designs display a love of making rather than showing what technology is capable of’
Marcel about the naked sofa: ‘There are hundreds of sofas out there. What’s the point of simply doing another one just the same? Why can’t sofa be as desirable as a designer bag? Or the latest shoes?’
‘ I think it’s important to pull things from the past and, showing respect for it, while connecting to the present’
‘Things should be imperfect. I think that’s why the knotted lounge chair made its mark. People were tiring of the perfection associated with the minimalist aesthetic of the 90s’

Interior design (USA) January 2007
‘ Unlike product design, interiors are about theater. They lead you form one idea to the next and the next’

Dwell (US) April 2006
‘Philosophy is not one truth, but thousands of truths. You don’t have to believe in just one thing. When you choose one idea, you close yourself to the rest.’
‘ I see people and I just want to be there for them; I want to help them live their dreams’
‘Performance is a big part of my work- I’ve got a lot of energy and it has to go somewhere.’

Clear (US) Volume 7, Issue 2, 2006 Lori Fredrickson
Intro: Marvelous Marcel: he brings music to your dreams. Star designer and everybody’s latest favorite

Marcel about Personal Editions:
‘The core of what we do in the studio is experiment, to truly innovate the market, to come up with new ideas, new thoughts and new visions for design’

Marcel about Happy Hour Chandelier:
‘Design is about humanity and excitement we have for our lives and the way and how we create our days to be more special and more festive. Happy Hour Chandelier supported this, creating things that are new, and they’re going to excite people and make them feel alive.’
I’m not the type of designer who’s really interested in construction and technology, the material aspect. I’m more interested in my audience and their experience, how to make it more exciting’

Beautiful Women 2006
“Luxury is to live an exciting passionate life in comfort and commitment, to feel you are special and make a difference while achieving personal growth, to contribute to the greater good and feel you share love”.
“Luxury starts where functionality ends and where the true value is personal and so has no price or reason”.
Marcel Wanders, Designer


--- below: quotes posted on the site in 2006 ---


Wallpaper (UK), August 2006, Nick Compton
‘His wacky creative Shtick may grate, but Wanders’ designs show a wit, lightness of touch and formal elegance exactly where it’s required.’

Viewpoint (NL), 2006, Lakshmi Bhaskaran,
‘While other designers are simply getting wrapped up in a riot of colour, his aesthetic rigour and desire to start from scratch is ensuring that his output will include some of the most enduring icons of the decade.’

Marcel Wanders, June 2006
‘I see design as a way to tell a story. Often my design is the story. It describes the experience I’m about to create, as well as the significance that the design may have for someone else.’

Dwell (USA), April 2006, Jane Szita
‘Wanders, like other Droog designers, has always had this impulse to strip design of it’s elitist tendencies, to work with forms that are universally understood – he calls them “archetypes” – and to use old things in a novel way, rather than straining for something new (…) Wanders has the anachronistic devotion to beauty of a Romantic poet’

Marcel Wanders, April 2006
'If I have any basic motivation, it’s to inspire people to make their life a masterpiece. So my biggest work is my life – and I take it seriously. But not too seriously.’

Telegraph Magazine (UK), April 8th, 2006, David Nicholls
‘Wanders is not a designer to be sniffed at…’

Marcel Wanders, May 2006
Let us use the achievements in technology to realize the dreams of humanity.

Attitude, 2006, Iris Abramovici Tevet on Moooi
‘Their ability to innovate, amaze and inspire gives thanks for Wanders and his fresh point of view.’

Marcel Wanders, February 2006
So many people will notice design, only when it fails.
It is my task to make them love it when it works.

Elle Décor (USA), Jan/Feb 2006, Julie V. Iovine
‘Wanders’ intrepid reinterpretations of the most prosaic objects renew our belief in design’s ability to sweeten daily life. It’s hardly surprising then that one of the things Wanders cannot live without is the curling lips of a smile.’

DWR (US) September 21, 2005, Rob Forbes
Wanders has earned his status in the design world as a visionary and leader. In addition to being art director for moooi, his work is offered by all the usual suspects—Flos, B&B Italia, Vitra, Boffi, Mandarina Duck and Bisazza. Wanders has won more awards and received more attention in the media than we have space to talk about. There is a reason Businessweek referred to him as "Europe's hottest designer" and The Washington Post identified him as "the design world's favorite star."

The Observer (UK) September 18, 2005, Dominic Lutyens
If he's not hijacking furniture fairs with his Bacchanalian floorshows, Marcel Wanders is knocking functionalism, his fellow designers - and some of the world's funkiest furniture into shape.

Marcel, Augst 2005
Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Icon (UK) June 2005, p.53
Marcel Wanders was ubiquitous this year (…) He was also responsible for the most talked-about party of the week: his Happy Hour Chandelier launch featured his girlfriend, Nanine Linning, suspended upside down above the crowd serving champagne. Wanders is probably the hottest designer in the world right now and this was his year.

Sleeper (UK) Spring 2005, p. 044-048, Jennifer Hudson
His designs might, at first glance appear playful. But each is a result of intelligence and advanced technological research into production methods and materials. He works not only to produce an object, which is aesthetically pleasing, but also to create something which will make the world a better place. He is critical of design which constantly tries to re-invent the chair. Although his products stretch archetypes and are challenging and surprising, they value the lessons he has learned from the past. They never slip into parody and as such do not alienate. They are very collectable. He is often quoted as saying that his work is always ‘humorous but never a joke’.

Marcel, May 2005
Style is an invention of the insecure.

Design Within Reach (US) April 20, 2005, Rob Forbes
Wanders and Moooi launched their presence at the Salone with a theatrical event that featured (…) Nanine Linning – a classical trained dancer and choreographer – performing a challenging dance and pouring champagne while hanging from a chandelier.

FutureDesignDays News#1, January 2004
Marcel Wanders: “Design, I guess is to create the unexpected welcome. We made something which we didn’t need, but suddenly it was there and we were happy with it.”

Financial Times (UK) February 2004, Janice Blackburn
(....) Marcel Wanders’ iconic Knotted Chair and his delicate vases moulded from rubber condoms, coral and nose mucus (the charmingly named “snotty vases”) demonstrate the same contradictionary traits that make these designers fascinating. Radical and revolutionary, childish and mischievous, practical and utilitarian. It’ s imperfection and not perfection that makes their work endearing.

Switch Magazine (HK) July 2003, Siobhan McNabb
Known as the man who rescued design from itself, his magical creations, utilize every day objects,
capturing the design world’s attention. Provocative by nature, Wanders’ works often dredge up memories, fantasies and dreams to the surface of the mind, frequently providing to be conversation starters. Every piece twists the ordinary into the extraordinary – our known reality into a surreal reality (....). Like some fellow artists Wanders also cares about social problems and uses his imagination and social power to help those in need.
“I really feel that design has the capacity to communicate and have concentrated on the communication of positive values”. Marcel Wanders sees our world as one filled with opportunities, a world where newness of existing treasures are just waiting to be revealed. Just as Goethe once said, “everything has been thought of before and the real problem is to think of it again”, Marcel Wanders says “ I steal from your head and give it back to you.”

Monument (Aus) October/November 2003
Marcel Wanders:“There are so many pieces being made every day and only a few you could call ‘design’. There is a lot of good work but it’s not just design, it’s just new products. A piece of design is something very special. It changes the way you feel about what life is. I appreciate products that are visual and there are a lot of people who want visual information. I don’t want to exclude anyone because there’s a responsability to reach out to a lot of people...for me this is important.”

Intra (GB) October 2003
Marcel Wanders about the Can of Gold project, London:
“A can is a throwaway article but if we were to look at it a second time, we would see the beauty in it.”

Superior Interiors, Annual interiors edition of Financial Times, May 2003
Marcel Wanders:” I'm not interested in the product itself - that's not what is important. It is how it makes people feel. I want to connect as many people as possible. They all react differently to a piece like the Knotted Chair.
Some just want to touch it. Some will want to know exactly how it was made - they just want to tell how
beautiful they think it is. This is how different people read life. "ive got to communicate with all of them.”

Pol Oxygen, no. 3 2003, Nicole Bearman
Marcel Wanders:” It is said that I am inspired by the ordinary, and off course that's right. But I also find it hard to understand the concept of 'the ordinary'. It seems to me the only ordinary thing in life is the fact that we seem to overlook all the little wonders around us. Every moment in time, every little detail of an object, the smallest change in your facial expression can make this day a day never to forget and very special.”

Metropolis, Februari 2003, Peter Hall
(In Wanders' world objects are not so much planned: they organize themselves. " The object decides what it wants to be".) Marcel Wanders:” I want to create products that are mass-produced but also have their own soul. The individuality of products does not have to be shaped by hand.”

Zinetta, Modular Lighting Magazine, Februari 2003
Marcel Wanders on the question whether creating environmentally friendly designs and their production process
sets limitations or creates a challenge:”A good and smart vision, a goal which is good for all, can only juice up the process of design, it makes the thresholds smaller, it makes the solutions closer. Design is a difficult game, only if you know why you want to win it, you will find a way how to win it. It is the why which makes the big difference not the how…….” .

(Marcel, on his believe in divine power)
“ If I close my eyes and think of all the greatness in and around me I feel a great power. It makes me grateful because I know I can never give back more than what I already did receive.”

Washington Post, April 2003
Marcel Wanders, the design world's favorite star, cast a splash of water in silver.

Architectural Record, December 2002
Within the span of a few years, Marcel Wanders has made the transition form brazen, young upstart, with his novel designs for the Dutch avant-garde label Droog, to become a leading figure in contemporary design, all the while creating innovative, often quirky objects. Most recently, he’s taken on new roles as art director for two other Dutch furniture lines, Moooi and Lensvelt, and as interior designer for the new Mandarina Duck flagship store in London. Wanders literally “breathes life” into the fashionable Italian label’s store with a series of patchwork walls and lifelike mannequins that gently inhale and exhale.

Bombay Sapphire’s press release, November 6, 2002
‘We were beyond thrilled that a designer as fascinating as Marcel Wanders wanted to participate in the campaign,” said Fritz Westenberger, Creative Director at Margeotes | Fertitta + Partners. “He’s an impeccable designer with a very free spirit, and he gave us a glass that sums up his style perfectly.

Interni, November 2002, Antonella Boisi
(…) we realize that this project is Marcel Wanders’ tribute to London and to a renaissance of shopping, making 21st century man the focus of the space, that international traveler bombarded by visual stimuli and messages, but yearning for a poetic application of technology, for fresh, unfamiliar sensations.

Living etc, October 2002
Marcel Wanders: ‘I think design needs to be warmed up a bit and connected to real people. I want to see more from the heart, less from the brain.’

Body Design, SFMoMA, 2002, press release
The shape of Marcel Wanders’s Airborne Snotty Vase: Pollinosis, 2001, is based on one “bloblet” of fluid from the shower of microscopic particles expelled when a person sneezes; a digital image of the particle is sent to a prototyping machine in which a computer directs a laser to melt and mold plastic powder into the shape that the sneeze particle occupies in space. (Each of the five vases in this series is named for a different infectious condition.)

Orgatec 2002
Marcel Wanders: “Only he who understands his own weakness is able to help another. (……) Design is the international language, it gives great possibilities for international marketing. The world will choose for local, and small will be beautiful, we feel danger comes from far, we tend therefore to also close our hearts for the great universal solutions. Design should more than ever show its strength and show trust in global (design) solutions to show its trust in a world where we live together. This will have to be done with far more respect than has been done till now. People will no longer feel at home if they are not seen and respected as individuals by us.”

Tate magazine, September/October 2002, Mark Rappolt
It is a little more sophisticated than the crude anthropomorphism that characterises large swathes of the Alessi range. ‘Nothing has meaning but the meaning you give it,’ is one of Wanders’ slogans, and it is his ability to create a material identity from a series of disparate narratives, to get you to engage with a product through the stories it tells, that is part of the secret of his success. Ask him how he did it and Wanders can tell you a tale every bit as fantastisc, ironic and inventive as one of Willy Wonka’s production techniques. He knows that he could have a very successful career in markeitng. And so do his clients.

The Independent Magazine, September 2002, Dominic Lutyens about WanderDuck
Dutch designer Marcel Wanders has a problem. He’s fed up with design being perceived as inert an inanimate. So earlier this year he launched a range of lung-like pouch bags for the super-cool fashionlabel Mandarina Duck. Both the bags and the collaboration were successful and Wanders has now taken his crusade to create organic and seemingly animate design to new heights with a flamboyant interior for the lable’s new, two-storey London store.

Arena, September 2002
Its latest product, the Murano bag line created by product design star-in-ascendant Marcel Wanders, is another technical benchmark. Made of a thermo-sensitive mateiral, it is assembled, oven-cooked at 180°C, and then inflated with compressed air before being allowed to solidify. Each bag is, like blown glass, unique. (…) And Wanders has even designed the revamped flagship store on London’s Conduit STreet opeing this month. Contrary to the trend to eliminate mannequins, the new store wil lhave plenty of them – and each will ‘breathe’, its chests gently rising and falling beneath the clothes. In fact, waliking inside the store will feel like entering an organisme, with its patchwork silver walls also ‘breathing’. Complete with framented glass shelving and the windows above the shopfront housing massive industrial fans, the shop will be, says Georg Gottl with some understatement, ‘absolutely wild’.

Axis, September/October 2002, Itsuro Shibata
About Tableau Vivant, tableware for the French province of Alsace Marcel Wanders was put in charge of design for the project by Droog’s director Gijs Bakker because Wanders ‘not only has poetry and wit, but excels in the ability to read cultural backgrounds and can handle high-prestige products.’

Intra, September 2002, Dominic Lutyens, about WanderDuck
(…) When news broke that Wanders would be creating the interior, the curiosity of the designerati was seriously aroused. How would the space be interpreted by this ultra-hip designer – hitherto a stranger to interior design, bar “ a small restaurant in Amstelveen, near Amsterdam, and the VIP lounge of the Dutch Pavillion at the World Exhbition of 2000

Business Week, July 2002,
A chair made out of rope soaked in glue. A candle-shaped electric lamp that turns itself off when you blow on it. Marcel Wanders' products sound odd, but their sly beauty and functionality are making the 38-year-old Dutchman Europe's hottest young designer. (…) Now, having gained some renown, Wanders is taking a stab at social activism. In his recently hatched Can of Gold project, gilded soup cans sell for $200 each--and the proceeds go toward food for the homeless. So far, 200 cans have been produced for sale in galleries in Hamburg and Washington. Take that, Andy Warhol.

Metropolis, July 2002, Kristi Cameron
Marcel Wanders has the hots for a wrinkly old bag.
Marcel Wanders’s puffy Murano bag for Mandarina Duck is full of big ideas. Made of two layers of textiles laminated around a foam core, the bag gets its distinctive shape and wrinkles when it is baked and then filled with cool air through a metal valve. (…) ‘The making of bags is really handcreafted, and there’s little new technology available,’ says Wanders. ‘I wanted to find another way to make volumes.’ Because there are no molds involved, each bag comes out slightly different. (…) The bag’s wrinkles, which naturally increase with use, are an ecxellent metaphor for individuality since we bear them ourselves.

The Washington Post, May 9, 2002, Linda Hales
The accomplished Dutch designer Marcel Wanders presided over the Moooi collection. (…) “One of my most important reasons to be in design is to inspire,” said Wanders, “This is our time. We think it’s okay to make a chair you’ll only sell three of. Twenty years ago, you’d be bankrupt.” He agreed the whole thing was “crazy,” but added quickly, “ The freedom we designers have, we will never give it op again.

The Toronto Star, April 2002, Shauna Levy
Marcel Wanders’ wood table for Cappellini is low to the ground with a pressed shimsical patterned top in stained maple.

The Washington Post, April 2002, Blake Gopnik
Marcel Wanders, one of the young veterans of the new Dutch movement, was in Washington last month to speak about his work. (…) Wanders’s limited-edition Airborne Snotty Vase comes in a range of crazy shapes the likes of which I guarantee you’ve never seen: Warty tubes, with strangely fluid branchings poking out of them, or gnarled rings of frozen gunk with tumor-like excrescences. But for all that Wanders’s forms may look entirely capricious and obscure, it turns out that they’re closer to Leonardo’s realism than to any dreamscape by Dali: Every one is closely based upon the microscopic specks blown out when humans sneeze, hugely enlarged and computer-modeled in 3-D. In a move that would make the finest artist proud, the very lowliest of particles– “the miracles we make on a daily basis,” as Wanders prefers to think of them – are turned into rarefied collectibles.
Wanders has also proposed a diadem for Holland’s newest princess, based on that famous stroboscopic image of a drop of liquid hitting a pool, and of the crown-shaped splash that forms around it. Molded in gleaming metal, the flowing water that is central to Dutch life and culture gels into a permanent symbolic form. “I like to take things that are out there,: said Wanders, “and use them to do just the opposite of what people expect.”
His functional objects, like those of his peers, often present a kind of picture of the world, transformed through a creative sensibility – precisely what much of functionless fine art gives us. Though Wanders insists on a crucial distinction: The kinds of “objects for use” he and his colleagues make, and ideally aim to mass produce, have the opportunity to infiltrate our daily lives as art-works in museums rarely can.
That may be why the art world has begun to take an interest in design.

Sense of Wonder, book of new collection Chi ha paura…?, Liesbeth den Besten
Marcel Wanders shows great respect for traditional craft values in his design work, while being equally at home with new technology. He also designs jewellery with a conceptual and humorous character. His latest piece – disguised as a comedy nose– can be worn as a stylisch necklace. ‘It is a spherical interpretation of world karma. We decide whether it reflects the inside world or the outside world, depening on where we look.’

Dwell, April 2002
Marcel Wanders about Pipe for Boffi: “As a shower, this simple, oversized U-pipe is a refreshing break from ‘customized’ multiple nozzles and high-tech massage showerheads that stare back blankly like stainless stell sunnflowers. Water in your house usually comes up from the ground, not from a lake behind the bathroom wall; plumbing can look complex, but rarely involves more than basic mechanics. The Pipe acknowledges those simplicities and delivers, in the words of the designer, ‘a waterfall … a thick stream of cleansing fresh water.”

Financial Times, March 2002, Helen Kirwan-Taylor
Marcel Wanders is another Dutch designer to watch. Creative director of the up-and-coming company Moooi, he straddles both sides of Dutch design, combining the artistic with the socially conscious, even witty. Wanders’ talent was quickly spotted, and he was snapped up by Cappellini, for whom he designed the famous Shadow Lamps.

Washington Post, March 2002, Linda Hales
Designer Marcel Wanders may be Holland's most ambitious export.
When he steps onto the stage at the Corcoran Gallery of Art Wednesday to talk about design, the38-year-old,basketball-tall Dutchman will show off the talent that has made him one of his country's, and also the design world's, new stars. Marcel Wanders:"A lot of my work is intelligent, a lot of the work is beautiful, but I make ugly things, too," says Wanders, who opened his own studio in 1995 after finding no one to produce his curious concepts. "When something is different or new, the word 'beauty' is hard. Beauty is very important, but it's not the most important thing in the world."
To these feats, Wanders has added a new experiment. He is turning soup cans into golden grails.
The point is conscience rather than commerce. There are pretty objects:shiny, slightly dented 24-karat gold-plated tin cans, with crimped lids still attached. Each is signed, numbered and specially labeled as a Wanders-designed "Can of Gold." But they have been made for a humanitarian purpose: The tax-deductible contribution of $200 per can is used to feed the homeless. In Washington the money goes directly to the Capital Area Food Bank. It's all part of a city-by-city crusade Wanders would like to spread around the globe.
As for the golden cans, Aaron Betsky, who owns one, says: "It's about finding gold in trash. If you can't find it, you make it. It's a very Dutch attitude to start with trash."

Frame, March/April 2002, Louise Schouwenberg
New Nostalgia
After a long absence, traditional methods have regained their former status. The success of Marcel Wanders’ Knotted Chair (1995) can be attributed, at least in part, to good timing. It was one of the first designs to cleverly combine an age-old craft – knotting cord – with high-tech material. The sudden popularity of old skills and handicrafts goes deeper, however, than a simple revaluation of traditions as part of the search for a cultural identity. A brief review of the history clarifies this point. That the avant-garde, to which Wanders belongs, distanced itself from old techniques for so long does not mean that such methods faced extinction. In another context, people continued making bobbin lace, embroidering, blowing lass and throwing pots.

Design Week, February 2002, Garreth Williams
Undoubtedly, a great sense of poetry imbues all Wanders' work, whether it is interiors, furniture or objects. At the Milan Furniture Fair in 2002, Wanders is presenting no less than 21 new designs, which you will be able to see at the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition Milan in a Van. The projects run the gamut from mass-produced plastics to prototypes, editions and experiments. It is a credit to the versatility and creativity of Wanders that his imprimatur is sought by so many design-led companies.
And the future? One thing is certain: we will be seeing a great deal more of Wanders' unique talent in the UK. His profile here has been relatively low-key to date, but the extraordinary Mandarina Duck store he is planning in London's Conduit Street, due to open in April, will shortly change that. And with products and projects about to appear with Amsterdam's Cor Unem, Cappellini, Magis, DMD, Goods, Flos, Moooi and, of course, a continuing relationship with Droog Design, the noughties will be the decade to wonder at Wanders.
Wanders should be an inspiration for the new generation of furniture and product designers, not to mention those manufacturers with wit enough to work with designers. Few designers are as adept and as poetic as him. Rejecting what he describes as a 'baby-face fixation' with fashionability, Wanders' designs are here for the long-haul. He designs objects with character and personality - objects that reward contemplation and are the result of intelligence and prolonged research.

Independent on Sunday, January 2002
If you’ve acquired a taste for Dutch design, or need more convincing, there’s a new show at London’s Crafts Council which you’d be daft to miss. The Knotted Chair is there, as is work by other Dutch Designers who have used unusual techniques and materials to come up with designs that thurn that whole Conran-sleek, contemporary consensus chic on its head.

Surface, October 2001, Grace Jeffers
Marcel Wanders invents irreverent and quirky items like crocheted chairs and vases made from condom-wrapped eggs. (…) It’s not enough for him to just create an object, he wants to set off a chain reaction, releasing designs like little boats on a lake, rudderless, seeing which way the winds of opinion take them. (…) His VIP chair, a stiff form draped in a wool ‘suit’ with flared trousers, reads like buoyant Joseph Beuys. Both massive and genteel, it appears to be cloaking a little old man inside. Everyone knows that chairs are anthropomorphic reflections of ourselves. They have legs, arms, backs, seats, shoulders and knees. But it took Wanders to clothe its nakedness.

Soul of Design (lecture program) , October 2001
One of Marcel Wanders’ goals is ‘making things with love’ in a time of technology, which gives any of his creations both body and soul. On the one side, he works with some of the most recent techniques and materials, yet on the other side he always incorporates something handmade, natural or friendly. (…) Wanders products are made to last, and another of his goals is for his objects to create a long-term relationschip with their users.
Humoristic, Marcel invents porcelain vases modeled from eggs in a condom or even patterns of airborn snottys. Altruistic, he serves soup to the hungry, guilds the empty soup cans, and sells them for the benefit of the homeless. Humanistic, he produces families of lamps, in Papa, Mama and Baby sizes, and proposes ‘dialogues’ of vases in different shapes and materials. Idealistic, he claims that ‘form follows the good’. In striving for these qualities, Marcel seeks to create ‘Products that are complete and hence genuinely signifcant to the user. Objects that touch you and that generate a positive feeling. In short: products worth bonding with for a lifetime.’

Nylon, August 2001, Melissa Barthes Rhodes
'He rocked the international interiors scene with his clever products for Droog, the radical Dutch collective. Now, Marcel Wandes has his own subversively stylish line and it's causing a commotion.'

Axis, July/August 2001
Marcel Wanders was the most outstanding designer at this year's Salone. He unveiled works with both Cappellini and flos. In addition he started up his own brand MOOOI (he added an extra O to the Dutch word for beautiful). New from MOOOI is his Flower Table made from lauan wood, and the V.I.P. Chair, which due to a spring structure gives the user the impression he's just sat on an elephant that has started to walk.

Echoes, June 2001, Jim Huff
‘Many designers produce work that is alien to the general public, but Marcel Wanders takes materials and forms that are common to our vernacular and twists them into wondrous fantasies. Like a magician he takes simple forms and materials - eggs and sponges, lace and rope - and using the alchemy of modern technology he transforms them into unexpected and surreal objects that are instantly beautiful and mystically intriguing.’

‘Most designers make our lives prettier, but Marcel Wanders seeks to make our lives better. He is an explorer who charts the connections between the domestic landscape and the human heart and his work is the map. His brilliant reinterpretations of the material world will inspire and influence us for a long time. Marcel Wanders loves humanity and he uses design as the vehicle for communicating messages of compassion, celebration and joy. We are lucky to be so loved by such a talented designer.’

The New York Times magazine, May 2001
‘The b.l.o. light took fairgoers’ breaths away. Designed for Flos by Marcel wanders, who seems destined to become design’s poet laureate.’

The New York Times, April 2001
‘The Dutch designer Marcel Wanders is Milan’s Houdini of materials.’

Frame, November/December 2000
Tales are more important to Wanders than the form of a design. ‘I see design as a way to tell a story. Often my design is the story. It describes the experience I’m about to create, as well as the significance that the design may have for someone else.’

Interiors, november 2000
‘he founds his practice on a respect for the past and the uplifting promise of good design.’

Washington Post, July 1st 2000, Linda Hales, about the knotted chair:
“The design is more poetic than industrial. You can sit in it, but that’s really not the point.”

Superior Interiors, April 2000
“Also very hot is Droog, the Dutch design group. The Droog collective, which works with countless avant garde designers and in particular the brilliant Marcel Wanders, whose rope chairs dipped in resin are a personal favorite.”

Frame, March/April 2000, on the lunch lounge
“Wanders allows the user to experience the fact that neither a dining environment nor the act of eating can be taken for granted. Using a varied palette of shapes and materials, Wanders has rearranged the obvious and given a new twist to an old story.”

Kuukausiliite (Finland), February 2000
“Dutch designer Wanders has all the credibility’s: communication ability, media charisma and wonderful design ideas. Like many other contemporary designers, Wanders mission is ecology, but he re-cycles also other things than just re-cyclable materials. In his hands familiar objects get new functions.”

Metropolitan Home, April-March 1999
'His famous knotted–rope chair looks like a piece of macramé. But macramé has never been so cutting-edge; a sophisticated polymer makes the rope rigid. Wanders goes out of his way to startle and amuse. “People,” he says, “need flamboyance in their lives.”

Wanders Wonders, design for a new age, 1999, Yvònne G.J.M. Joris, Director Het Kruithuis, Museum of contemporary Art
“What is so wonderful about the designs of Marcel Wanders and his associates is that remembering and familiarity are such an important part of their newness.”

Renny Ramakers
“The great emancipatory narratives have gone: now it is the turn of small stories, rooted in everyday reality. Stories that tell of products capable of ageing gracefully and allowing the user to bond with them, of the value of the things that already exist, of personal ecology, of uncertainty, dreams, passion and pleasure. These are not moralizing tales, nor do they proclaim any universal truths. But they dare to put forward different truths and even to sound paradoxical. They are small stories that everyone can understand, stories that are well worth retelling. They will not radically change the world, but they do give meaning to our culture. Thanks to them, we will not only find superficial acquaintances within the endless stream of new products, we may also make one or two friends for life.”

* Aaron Betsky
“Where Wanders distinguished himself is in the making of objects that escape from the fluidity of funniness and slick form by presenting themselves as frozen monuments.(…) Wanders is a well-trained industrial designer who knows how to attack problems like how to make a credit card holder that really works (Card Case), or who can make recyclable glasses for an airline that keep hot and cold beverages manageable (Glasses for British Airways). He also knows how to make elegant objects. (…) This is what Wanders’ wonders achieve: they make us wonder. As we go swimming from form to form, as our factories and computers go on spewing out image after image, Wanders creates a stutter, a frieze in the flows, a freeze frame. For a moment, we stop, try to figure out what haunts us, how the object works, what it is made out of, why it looks the way it does.. We might then continue in our frenetic movements, but Wanders’ spare moments will continue to remind us that somewhere and somehow we must stop, make, use, reflect. If architecture is frozen music, then Wanders’ designs are the ice cubes of the fast flows of modern capital and the artificial landscape it creates.”

* Andrea Branzi
“The work of Marcel Wanders is placed within that range of researches that investigate about a new relationship between technology and nature. Since a long time these two areas have been considered in conflict and alternative: where technology came, nature disappeared, as well as the contrary. Today finally design finds out that this conflict can be by-passed: technology has become a second friendly nature, that surrounds us, and sets with us a complex and flexible interface. On the other hand, nature can be considered a quite advanced technology, a deep energy of transformation of the world.”

* Paola Antonelli
“Learning through experience and manipulation, lulling his own passion and obsession until they became powerful creative tools, Wanders has created in his objects connections that where as unexpected as they where revealing.”

* Bart Lootsma
“There is a rare lightness about Wanders’ work. Ask a writer, a filmmaker or a musician and he or she will tell you that the most difficult thing on earth is to produce a light piece.”

Karl Lagerfeld about Droog Design in V magazine, November/December 1999
“There is a youth and freshness in their work that makes it so great, so easy to live with and also very different. They may very well become the most influential designers of the new millennium. “

Philippe Starck about Droog Design in V magazine, November/December 1999
“Droog is the only new thing in recent design.”

The New York Times, April 1997, Julie V. Lovine
'At its best, it took the scare out of the avant-garde; Marcel Wanders one of the Droog Designers, carried it off in his dip-strengthened resinated macramé chair. ("I liked macramé even when it was so out of fashion I had to hide my macramé books between the sex manuals," he said.)'

Industrieel ontwerpen, 1997
'Some products act as signposts, incentives to investigate new applications of materials and techniques: the 'knotted chair' of Marcel Wanders is just such a product.'

Blueprint, October 1996, Michael Horsham
'Droog continues to push boundaries in several different directions. Marcel Wanders' knotted chair is the result of collaboration with aeronautical engineers.'

Interni, September 1996, Sergio Calatroni
'His object was the true revelation of the entire Salone, the only object worth seeing. Why? Because it represents true research, risks, poetry, visions, technology in the right mixture; and, finally, because it is art.'

Domus, August 1996, Juli Capella
'It is not a style, but rather a frame of mind where the important thing is the intelligence of each object and its ability to relate to the user. Droog has undoubtedly been one of the most outstanding newcomers of the 'off salone" circuit.'

Libération, on designers of Droog design 1996
'They are magicians of 'spiritual savoir-vivre'.

Domus, August 1996, Juli Capella
'Wanders has the bare-faced cheek of the rookie, the boldness that springs from naïveté and the shamelessness of the daredevil.'

Bijvoorbeeld, 1 1995, Liesbeth den Besten
'Marcel Wanders' work sounds like a credo feels like a refreshing breeze and tastes like more.'

Axis, Fumiko Ito
'This year there were a number of currents that were presentiments of a new age, and that make us feel the depth and tenacity of the latent power of the Milan Salone, these include the devotion to dry tech.'

Abitare, Stefano Casciani
'Yes, an idea at last.'

View on Colour, Lidewij Edelkoort
'The Chair is a perfect example of the hand-made/high-tech design that will mark the end of this century.'

Museum of Modern Art New York, Paola Antonelli
'It is less indulgent and flashy than the design of the eighties, more experimental in its use of materials, and often inspired by genui necessity. Still, it sustains elements of surprise and deep intellectual beauty, because it relies more on invention than on the elaboration of styles.'

Herald Tribune, 27 4 1996, Lucy Young in Making a statement with 'Mutant' Materials
'Marcel Wanders's knotted-carbon fiber chair for Droog was ground-breaking and gravity-defying nevertheless. It has an exotic, airy look, like something Mies van der Rohe might have created if he had worked in macramé in Morocco rather than leather in Germany.'

Jury report Kho Liang Ie-consolation prize, Industrieel Ontwerpen 1996.
'His designs represent a poetic and conceptual approach of functionality, the use of materials and visual appearance"..)