A product can live on one great idea. An interior needs 1,000 great ideas to really live, which makes interior design a whole orchestration of this art of juxtaposition, placement, and combination.
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 make chairs, they have legs; they can go anywhere in the world. Interiors are a different responsibility. A house is a representation of where you are, and it has to be right for the place.
For me, true kitsch has nothing to do with irony. It's very honest. It represents what people like, their dreams.
Humor has the tendency to be funny once. If I tell you a joke, we're going to have a big laugh. But the second time I tell the joke, it's going to be a bit strange, and the third time you're going to ask if there's something wrong with me. So I am very cautious with jokes, but there is a lightness in my work.
I wear mascara sometimes, a little lip gloss.
I have a long list of how people call me: 'The Prince of Design,' 'Beethoven of Design,' 'the Dutch Prince of Design' and the list goes on and on and on... and also the 'Lady Gaga of Design!' I am fine with it. I think she is an amazing character who has innovated the music scene and is respected by so many people; she is surprising.
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.
Modernism is an outmoded way of thinking about design: it just doesn't reflect the way we live now. It always puts forward this idea that the past is irrelevant to tomorrow - and tomorrow is all that matters. But the past is part of who we are.
When I had just finished my degree show, I wrote down the 10 companies that I most wanted to work with, and B&B Italia was on the top of the list.
I collect memories. I look for opportunities to try new things, go to new places, and meet new people all the time.
If I look at my own growth, I started in product design. And we grew and created new products, and we were also able to change the idea of design a few times.
Opulence doesn't cost more than boring.
I listen to a variety of music. I like everything from old Arabic music to Portuguese fados.
As humans, we are not so rationalist as we think we are. I think our biggest quality is indeed that we are human, truly human: if our biggest quality would be rationality, we would lose our soul.
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'm 100 percent sure the love and energy we give to a project will end up inside of it. I think it's important that when we work on something, we do it with positive intentions, because this energy will be sensed in the design.
People like their handbag more than their sofa, and I hate it.
I want to create a world with objects and surroundings that are human, more romantic, and less sterile.
Some people have a concept of design: that it should be without the maker. I have been educated in this way, the traditional way. But I am not naive. I know that we make my things, and that people want them. I am signing them - and I am winking at them.
