Profile: Sabine Marcelis

One of the design realm’s most singular contemporary talents, the Netherlands-based designer casts light into materiality, colour and form as a guiding principle that drives her multidisciplinary practice.

Over a Zoom call, the backdrop behind Sabine Marcelis is a woollen rug in a nostalgic teddy-bear texture. “It’s a very old project, but it’s one of the first doughnut projects I ever did actually,” says the designer. The doughnut marks a couple of Marcelis’s most recognisable designs: the Poa pouf for Hem and her Varmblixt table/wall lamp for IKEA. That instinctive appeal is something that’s matched by other motifs in her remarkably varied body of work.

Whether it’s her coloured glass light artworks, resin Totem lights and Candy Cubes, available from Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert in Sydney, or public installations – including a fountain made of reclaimed onyx in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark – the Dutch creative has always had an inquisitive curiosity on the boundaries of design and the outcomes it can achieve.

The Dutch creative has always had an inquisitive curiosity on the boundaries of design and the outcomes it can achieve.

Marcelis grew up in New Zealand’s Waihi, at the base of the Coromandel Peninsula. “We lived in the middle of nowhere and I could ride my horse through kiwifruit orchards. It was just the simplicity of absorbing nature,” she says. And it’s clear that Aotearoa made an impact on Marcelis, despite being settled in Rotterdam with her architect partner Paul Cournet, their son Kai and newborn daughter Bo. “I think if I hadn’t had that youth, there’s no way I would be working the way I am now in this very industrial city because I feel like I have all that inspiration from back then that I still go to for projects.”

Marcelis lived between New Zealand and America for a few years, studying industrial design at Victoria University in Wellington before moving back to the Netherlands and attending Design Academy Eindhoven. “I always imagined I’d finish my studies then move back to New Zealand, but I just quickly got a bunch of jobs,” she says. “Then, before I knew it, it’s 10 years later and I have a French boyfriend and employees and a kid.”

Her insatiable appetite for learning about materiality has held her in good stead.

Her time studying was seminal, particularly at Design Academy Eindhoven. “What I really learned very quickly is that if I want to realise these ambitious projects, I need to work with others. I started reaching out to factories and material specialists and then that’s still how I work now.” Her insatiable appetite for learning about materiality has held her in good stead. “I’m able to get more ideas from knowing how things are made,” she says. “I think it’s so important to understand that this is a production process – how can you be creative within that and then create something interesting?”

Marcelis founded her studio in 2011. “I was told by a lot of people that I had to choose my lane. But that’s so sad because I want to do many different things,” she says. “I love to mix up doing something for IKEA, which is a completely different way of thinking and designing than doing a site-specific installation at Te Papa [New Zealand’s national museum]. And I feel like both feed each other as well because you run into problems within one scale of working that can become a spark of interest for a smaller-scale project and vice versa. I think the thread is always that I’m just really trying to showcase the magic of materials in combination with light and how light can really activate different materials.”

“I think the thread is always that I’m just really trying to showcase the magic of materials in combination with light and how light can really activate different materials.”

This exploration has perhaps been best highlighted by Marcelis’s resin Candy Cubes, featured by luxury brands the likes of Celine, Dior, La Prairie and Fendi. “With the Cube, it started as a pedestal for bags and shoes, but it’s really taken on a life of its own,” she says. “Lorde took it on tour with her. People use them as coffee tables or side tables. Vitra has it in their design collection. I love that there is room for interpretation.”

Resin offers such incredible malleability with light play but also brings sustainability concerns, a point not lost on the designer. “I really keep it in very limited-edition production or unique pieces,” she says. “We get the base material, which is a liquid, from our supplier at 60 per cent bio-based. I would like it to be, say, 80 per cent. And the challenge will always remain that there are a million alternatives to resin that are even 100 per cent bio-based, but they’re opaque and the transparency is what we always play with.”

That sense of play takes an elevated turn whether Marcelis uses resin, glass, colour or stone.

That sense of play takes an elevated turn whether Marcelis uses resin, glass, colour or stone. Her repertoire has evolved to public-facing work, including stacked marble swivel chairs for London Design Week at St Giles Square beside Tottenham Court Road Station in 2022 and ‘Building Blocks’, four sculptures that appear as coloured, mirrored cubes atop Brutalist grey bollards at Te Papa. Kinetic installations – “a new layer for my work” – include ‘Vista Aeterna’, a dozen travertine-based pillars with rotating mirrored faces for Bulgari alongside the Spanish Steps in Rome, “and I have another kinetic installation that’s up until the end of the year in Atlanta at the High Museum of Art.” These outdoor installations have been her “dream projects,” says Marcelis. “It’s very cool to just have people interacting with your work every day – I love just to sit on the sideline and observe how people absorb it.”

Another successful partnership has been with Vitra, which started when the Dutch creative powerhouse curated the ‘Colour Rush!’ installation at the Vitra Design Museum, the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Schaudepot in Germany. Marcelis then took over VitraHaus Loft with a tonal interior – “identifying uses of an open space through colour” – echoed in limited editions of the Panton Chair Classic and the Visiona stool by iconic Danish designer Verner Panton. The loft design was guided by Marcelis’s own approach to her home: “I didn’t want it to be a showroom of my own stuff. I want to be surrounded by my friends and they’re amazing pieces, so we commissioned a lot of different designers and artists that either I really respect or that are really close to me to fill that space.”

“It’s very cool to just have people interacting with your work every day – I love just to sit on the sideline and observe how people absorb it.”

As testament to the common threads throughout her career – materiality, functional art, working closely with trusted and admired talent – Marcelis is about to release her first chair, crafted in aluminium, a commission for the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam. “It’s currently being completely renovated by Paul’s studio, Cloud,” she says. “There were so many demands on it – it has to be durable, stackable, producible, ergonomic. And I, again, wanted to use something, a material, that is already 100 per cent recyclable.” The chair will be produced by BD Barcelona; owners Nacho Alegre, Omar Sosa and Marco Velardi are friends of Marcelis and Cournet’s.

Her studio has also moved to a new location in Rotterdam. “I feel like it would’ve been a lot cheaper if we just demolished the whole building and started new,” she says. “But it just has a super nice character and with the tip of the building’s A-frame – in Dutch, it’s called lichtestraat – we just get beautiful natural light, so it’s a very inspiring place to be.” A lichtestraat is a skylight but its literal translation to English is ‘light street’, which is apt for Marcelis, as she has always been chasing the light.