Designer Marcel Wanders on bringing his playful vision to Shanghai – interview

Marcel Wanders was probably never cut out for design school, which is maybe why his first one kicked him out. The acclaimed product designer – and provocateur – now sometimes finds himself lecturing the next generation. “I always say I’m not there to have an opinion on their work but to applaud their ideas, to help them make their concepts deeper,” he says. “Design is about culture. It’s about creating something unique, not following other people’s rules – even if that’s what a lot of designers have been educated to do.”

The 62-year-old has designed some 1,900 objects for design brands like Moroso, B&B Italia, Boffi, Alessi, Flos and Baccarat, as well as famous names that range from Louis Vuitton to even Marks & Spencer. His designs have also become part of the permanent collections of august institutions from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum to New York’s MoMA.

“Functionality is the lowest standard in design, even if a lot of designers pride themselves on it. When I say that I can see the shock across the lecture room,” he says, chuckling at the memory of some of his students’ faces. “There’s a silence, or a confusion at the idea. But, really, if a chair is just about functionality then it’s competing with a €16 plastic chair, which will do the job just as well. And it’s a nonsense to say that a more expensive chair is about making fit better. Of course design is about more than that.”

Wanders’ own designs may still function, but they also challenge, perplex, entertain. Among his most well-known works are the Knotted Chair – the result of a process he developed by which rope can be hardened like steel; his Carbon Balloon Chair – which looks as though it’s been made from party balloons, although these have, again through a process of his own devising, been dipped in carbon; and, most famously, a vessel modelled on a spectacularly explosive nasal emission. It’s called the Airborne Snotty Vase.

Now he’s bringing his vision to Shanghai. There, Wanders has opened the latest showroom for his Moooi lighting and furniture brand, which he co-founded 25 years ago as a means of championing the work of up-and-coming designers and which now includes the established likes of Jaime Hayon, Maarten Baas and Hilde Koenders, among many others.

“We’re going to find out what [design] speaks to people in China, because in a world in which there’s a lot of everything there’s only one Moooi – and I think there’s still excitement for something more playful, not corporate like a lot of design today,” enthuses Wanders. “[The Chinese] are new to the idea of individualism maybe, so I think it’s going to work well there”.