This article is not to be confused with one which I've recently written for another design publication on a related but different topic. That article is decidedly less critical in tone - at my editor's request.
In a very few years since creating witty vases in the shape of sponges and eggs-in-a-condom for experimental Dutch design collective Droog in the late 1990s, Marcel Wanders has, remarkably, emerged as one of Europe's hottest designers - if glowing press reports are to be believed. Wanders has always worked in a humourous vein - his Blo Lamp for Italian lighting company Flos is in the shape of a candle which turns off when you blow on it - and he has merged craft techniques with modern aesthetics - such as his "Knotted Chair" for Cappelini in 1996 in which carbon fibre rope is dipped in epoxy resin and knitted into a rustic fishing net shape. Needless to say this is a far cry from the high-tech plastics, metals and gleaming glass predominant at the time. But it appears Marcel Wanders' greatest creation may be his own celebrity - he has developed a position for himself as a star designer in this mediatized age - an enviable position for any designer - and is now contemplating his self-appointed role as spokesperson for design. He is upset that his chosen field does not enjoy the notoriety and cultural prestige of other creative endeavours and is determined to change things. "What happens in fashion and art and architecture matters more than interiors - we need a rather more interesting message" Wanders enthuses. "We need to make new connections - get new people in the market - design a chair with Porsche - or have George Bush design a chair - I don't know just try new things - some crazy ideas". Now as art director of new manufacturer Moooi, Wanders is in a position to try new things. Some even consider him pretender to Phillipe Starck's throne as joker-king of the design world. In 2001, office furniture manufacturer Hans Lensvelt and design furniture broker Casper Vissers, longtime friends of Wanders, approached him with the idea of closing Marcel's previous company "Wanders Wonders" and creating Moooi, which is Dutch for "beautiful" - "but we added an 'o' for extra beautiful" Wanders says. By the spring of 2002, Moooi showed its first collection at the Milan Salone. The new arrangement allows Wanders the freedom of acting as art director - curating and collaborating with other designers such as Jasper Morrisson and Ross Lovegrove and fostering the work of promising young designers - and, perhaps his greatest talent, marketing. When I got this assignment I was skeptical. I had lost interest in high end furniture design in the late 90s when wealthy friends with dot com companies and subscriptions to Wallpaper* magazine were investing car-sized budgets on barely comfortable minimalist sofas. With low-end modern design companies like IKEA and in Japan Muji and even Target in the U.S. closing the quality gap at the same time as the price gap widened, it seemed perfectly obvious to me that high end custom-ordered design furniture would go the way of bespoke tailoring - and soon be virtually extinct. Like anyone prone to flipping through design magazines, I had heard of Wanders. I had seen his massive yellow mannaquin on a visit to London's Mandarina Duck store and was aware that he was doing a sofa for the entrance of the Dutch Embassy in Berlin, but knew little else. A cursory look at the Moooi website was little help in my research and newpaper and magazine articles were generally quite positive but without much critical attention. After polling some friends who are active in the design world I found opinion sharply divided - apparently he is either one of the strongest designers working today and the potential saviour of design (so I'm not the only one who thinks it is in trouble) - or he's an ideas-free mediocrity more interested in fame and wealth than anything else. This is not a complete surprise, Wanders is not the only designer given to hyperbole - but rarely is there such discrepancy about the worth of a given designers' work. But as one of Wanders' design heroes, Charles Eames said, "design is assertion" and Wanders is more than willing to assert himself and in sometimes unusual ways. Perhaps the strongest part of the Moooi company is its marketing strategy. "We're in the business of communication" Wanders says, "and not only visual communication" Both Wanders and Vissers make frequent reference to "the story" behind each design. In a striking company booklet - among the most visually interesting I've seen in years, graphic designer Desiree de Jong, along with high quality contributions from photographers Erwin Olaf and partners Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek and others has made a cohesive and powerful statement of Moooi's mixed bag of designers. If anyone can make a $6,000 minimalist sofa look attractive, and more to the point, sell - perhaps it is Wanders. In spite of the fact that my hotel is only a few hundred metres from Wanders' studio in central Amsterdam, he insists that we meet for lunch at a restaurant on the outskirts of Amsterdam, along the Amstel river. For the restaurant, as with Moooi, it seems presentation and context is everything. Later, when I learn that Wanders is designing interiors of a boutique hotel on the property, it occurs to me that I may have just bicycled 45 minutes to allow him the opportunity to bring it up in conversation. As part of a designer ghetto including a large Vitra showroom and architects' offices Restaurant Lute is clearly a designer's restaurant - and one of the most expensive in the city. Sober dark wood tables and clean lines are balanced by outrageous, brightly coloured heavy shag carpets. If I didn't know otherwise, I would assume Wanders designed it. The crowd looks to belong to the exclusive world of wealthy, whimical aesthetes whom might pay Euro 4,000 for a minimalist sofa with a jokey selection of throws of fun fur, lace or patterns that button on, as in Wanders' "Bottoni" for Moooi. Wanders bounds in with the infectious energy, and supreme confidence of a man on a mission. Without much prompting, Wanders begins to tell "the story", and perhaps the strongest conceptual point of the Moooi collection - "We want to be both individuals and part of a family - we try, in the collection, to allow for both possibilities". "A lot of companies do only crazy stuff or only very normal" Wanders continues, "but people want to combine these things - they do this in their lives all the time". If Phillipe Starck can mismatch iconic chair designs as he did in New York's Hudson Hotel, Wanders can go one better and produce a jumble of disconnected aesthetics under one label. So Moooi is a combination and a juxtaposition of extreme positions. Dumoffice's gumby-like upholstered foam "Unkle" chair is contrasted with Bertjan Pot's "Random Light" of epoxy and fiberglass spun around a balloon which is later popped leaving an ethereal light shade. Ross Lovegrove's familiar future-looking forms are here contrasted with woven seating in his "Lovenet" pieces for Moooi and Jasper Morrisson also breaks from his aesthetic to create cork stools which allude to the iconic wine cork. Perhaps the most successful piece in the collection, Jurgen Bey's "Light Shade Shade" (originally designed for Droog design in 1999) represents a duality in itself. As part of the "Moooi Veer" subset - Dutch for "beautiful again" - Bey's semi-transparent mirror film slips over a chandalier to achieve a delicate balance between seemingly incompatible aesthetics. In the finished product both traditional chandalier and minimalist shade benefit from the collusion. But aside from wanting "to inspire the world with my designs, with my passion" and reciting several well rehearsed quotes which I've already seen in print elsewhere, Wanders seems to have little to actually say about things outside of the rarified world of high end design. I try to engage him on several random topics - global aesthetics, Dutch design, technology, changing work and travel patterns and he has surprisingly few opinions or ideas to offer. In an attempt to compensate for his disinterest in these topics, he points to one design which I find particularly offensive, Maarten Baas' "Smoke Chair" - essentially a burnt Victorian upholstered armchair, finished with epoxy. According to Wanders "it tells a lot about who we are today" and directs me to the designer-arsonist's psuedo-intellectual statement as explanation - some relativist guck about not wanting to have an opinion on anything. Well I have an opinion on this "design" - it exists solely as a press stunt and as such, exposes the least attractive elements of Moooi's offering. Perhaps Wanders is achieving the sort of notoriety he says he wishes for the design industry. But on his way to becoming the Damien Hirst of furniture he also risks making a cheap joke of design - and taking attention and resources away from those who have more to offer. The best of Moooi's pieces, mostly by other designers, are quite good, but at its worst it is full of sophomoric jokes such as the "Bottoni Sofa", "Crochet Table" and "Smoke Chair". The typically reserved Dutch have a term for people like Wanders - (which I've forgotten) Presse h_______? (press horny). If he is to make a positive impact on the design industry it would be better to be less concerned with attracting press and more with having something to say once he does. James Culham related articles: frank gehry at the moca - "genius" or just good p.r.? douglas coupland - the world's first table signing massive claim - bruce mau on the future of design culture a world gone to pottery barn - new york's icff
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