Hasta La Ideas

Marcel Wanders and his new Dalia armchair for Cappellini. Portrait by Erwin Olaf.

This is the fourth installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. We’ll be posting a new interview every other Tuesday.

Name: Marcel Wanders

Occupation: Designer of the new age

Location: I am working and living in Amsterdam.

Current projects: We always work on about 50 projects, so it’s difficult to say which I’m working on. I’m working on a large study for a musician. I’m working on products for Moooi. I’m working on lighting pieces for Flos. And so on and so on.

Mission: I’m here to create an environment of love, live with passion, and make my most exciting dreams come true.

Wanders’s new Cloud sofa for Moooi, where he is the art director

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? I was about 17. Someone told me there’s something like design. I had no idea. But then when I got to understand what it was about, I felt that it was so incredible and so wonderful and such important work. And I really gave my life to that.

Education: First I went to the Design Academy Eindhoven. And after nine months they kicked me out of school. So I went to another school which was way more craft oriented. Then, simultaneously, I started to study at a school which was really industrial oriented. And then, when I stopped with both of these schools, I finished my schooling in Arnhem at the Institute of the Arts.

First design job: While I was studying, I did quite a few projects already. But my first real job after I finished school was a project I did for the Dutch post office. I made a series of desk lamps.

Who is your design hero? I think there are quite a lot of heroes in my life, because there are so many people I learned different things from. There’s not one who stands out. But you do see people who are above the rest, because they are able to really change the field, to change how all of us think about design. Philippe Stark is one of them, Gehry is one of them, Koolhaas is one of them. Certainly there are a great deal of others.

Above and below: Wanders’s studio in Amsterdam

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Loebach and some “failed experiments” in his Brooklyn studio

This is the second installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. We’ll be posting a new interview every other Tuesday.

Name: Paul Loebach

Occupation: I’m a furniture and product designer.

Location: Brooklyn

Current projects: I’m just finishing up a watering can design I did for an American brand called Kontextür, and I’m working on some new lighting with the American company Roll & Hill. And there are always a couple confidential new projects in the works.

Mission: My philosophy as a designer is to improve the lives of society as a whole by bringing value and meaning to the objects that inhabit our material world.

The X3 Watering Can‘s handle and pour spout are a single metal tube, bent three times.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? When I was really young. I remember playing with my toys and thinking about ways that they could be improved and wanting to redesign them. Eventually that evolved into my awareness of the field of industrial design.

Education: I went to Rhode Island School of Design, studying industrial design. Graduated in 2002.

First design job: Right after I graduated, I moved to New York City to do an apprenticeship for a furniture designer named John Davies. Basically I did full-scale drawings of wood furniture under his guidance. I did that for a year, at which point I branched off and started my own design business.

Who is your design hero? I don’t know if I have any one particular hero. Anytime I open up a design book or magazine, I just have respect for all those people that have made their mark in that way, because I know how much effort, thoughtfulness, patience, and stamina it takes to get there. So the people that are out there doing it and making it happen in general are my design heroes.

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