Quotes from Marcel Wanders

Amsterdam lives and breathes creativity. One moment you walk into a building from the 17th century, and the next you find yourself in a hub of creative start-up companies.

Normally I don't care so much about food. I'm more interested in the people I'm with.

I've turned into something of a health nut.

An object should elicit desire, and often it happens not because people need it but because they love it.

Whether or not you like an object, it's the product of an individual person making decisions about things. That's what makes it interesting.

When I wrote my book about Amsterdam, the main objective was to talk about the city's creativity rather than just its design.

The fundamental dogma of Modernism - that, if the past is irrelevant to the future, then today is irrelevant to tomorrow - has created a throwaway society of disposable objects. That is sick.

Amsterdam is a breeding ground for new creative pursuits in many areas fueled by a tolerance and openness to ideas unlike any world city I've been to. There is something for everyone here, especially when you dare to go off the beaten path.

Great design is so many things all at the same time. It is emotional, functional, and responsive. It creates an unwritten dialogue, a connection, between itself and those who experience it. It is open to interpretation yet created for a specific purpose. It creates meaning and value.

We are buying stuff we know we don't need, and that is a problem we should face in design. It starts with creating an object that transports through time a valuable idea: that it can live forever.

Luxury is not about the things that you own. It is about something that reflects your personal values, something that shows the choices that you have made in your life.

Opulence doesn't cost more than boring.

There are many design companies, but there are few designers who organize their own business and open it up to other designers.

There is always a reason behind things that are made, and if there isn't, there will be one when they travel through the world. The objects of beauty are used to impress, seduce, overwhelm, make money, support identities, and show power or style, among other things.

I listen to a variety of music. I like everything from old Arabic music to Portuguese fados.

My design always has a political agenda. When I borrow components from various cultures and juxtapose them in an object, it is a message that co-existence is indeed possible. Design creates an ideal world where different ideas live close to each other in perfect harmony.

I want to create a body of work that is really, deeply important to people. One of the vehicles I use is business.

In my studio, I forbid people to work if they have a down day.

I think architects design outside in. Or they design basically outside. They don't get in the building anymore.

The need to express yourself in Los Angeles makes the city so vibrant. If I lived here, it would be lovely to be in a cool new high-rise looking out over a city that is exploding.

I like transparency. I love to have views throughout the house.

Design is a tool that allows us to reach out and inspire, to touch others and help make lives magic and wonderful

It's difficult for a company to be anywhere interesting in a world that is so dominated by prototypes and great and bright ideas.

There is no one I'd like to exclude when I design. It's not like I'm trying to design for everyone. Probably can't do that. Yet I try not to exclude anyone.