Wanders' studio at Westerhuis—

Housed in a former school that Wanders converted into his office and workshop, as well as a ground-floor gallery and showroom, this studio achieves a rare horizontality in this vertically compressed city. Wanders' unique predilection for ornament and detail, as well as the seemingly effortless creative flow within the office, suffuses Kok's atmospheric video.
The full report can be found in Domus 943.


In an Amsterdam redolent of snow, at 187 Westerstraat, a road between two canals on the edge of the old centre, red flags flutter in a row along the cornice of a brick building. Flapping in the wind, they seem to signal the presence of a person who, like the wind, has made lightness the essence of his work. Histrionic in representing himself, Marcel Wanders does in fact love lightness. Yet he ponders the exact meaning of every word and leaves nothing to chance. Like a true Dutchman, he has his feet firmly on the ground. He also possesses an uncommon flair for enterprise and is very attentive to detail. The world that he constantly mixes into his work is visible from the part of his studio that overlooks the old city: an expanse of rooftops with fantastically shaped chimneys and threads of smoke rising into the sky; a cityscape dotted with bell towers and numerous churches. Wanders had been longing to have his office right here. So when the Amsterdam City Council put this ex-school up for sale, on condition that it be used for an interesting initiative, he proposed that it be converted into a creative centre. The authorities accepted, and Wanders was able at last to organise his studio horizontally, in a city where everything tends to be narrowly vertical. The building’s third and fourth levels are occupied by his atelier, while the ground floor accommodates the Paul Andriesse contemporary art gallery and the Moooi showroom, of which Wanders is the art director and co-owner. The first and second floors house a variety of enterprises linked to creativity, such as a photography school and an advertising agency.

The red flags of this “city in the city” might also suggest a homage to Amsterdam. This city was the focus of the histrionic Dutchman’s book Amsterdam Creative Capital published in 2009: a visual journey into the history of all the arts (from theatre to painting via architecture and more besides) that have made and continue to make this city unique. Past and present always go together in Wanders’s work. “Designers,” he says, “and people in general are too attracted by the ‘new’, but nothing ages more quickly than ‘newness’. And so I decided long ago that every design of mine would embody my respect for the past. All my objects reflect this kind of marriage between past and present.”

Wanders is well aware that his job is not simply to create goods. He knows that design “communicates information”, sometimes enriching people’s knowledge of the material or culture surrounding an object. In order not to bar anyone from understanding his work, he prefers to use uncommon means. For example, he drew on poetry to recount his design of the Troy chair for Magis. “People have different ways of understanding things. Some people are visionary and know what they want at a glance. Others are rational: to make sure they have understood, they need to read a whole book. Others are emotive, and want to be told a story.”

What do we like most about Wanders? Against all our expectations: this quality of being so deeply rooted in tradition. And his striving, at all costs, to infuse added value into our everyday gestures.