Between Form and Feeling with Sabine Marcelis
In this conversation, Sabine Marcelis reflects on process, authorship, and the freedom to create without predefined outcomes, exploring how objects can move beyond function to become part of how we live, interact, and, most of all feel.
Article and interview by Tim Small. Images By Titia Hahne.
Sabine Marcelis has built a practice on precision, material clarity, a strong use of color and light and a very distinct sense of form, yet her work often resists easy categorization: her pieces profoundly challenge the idea that the function of an object must always be clearly defined. Her collaboration with Hem, most notably the Boa Pouf, embodies this approach: an iconic, popular object with no obvious beginning or end, no fixed use, and no compromise in execution. The Boa reflects a shared belief between the designer and the brand, that design can emerge from intuition as much as intention, and that objects are, essentially, what you make of them.
Tim: Hem has always talked about the idea that they want to be a bridge between the world of design and the world of art. I like this idea that it’s not so much like, “Oh, we need a chair that’s this size, at this cost, because we need to complete the product proposals on our living room furniture line,” but it’s more like the approach of a gallerist, maybe, who likes an artist and then is like, “Hey, let’s do something together.”
Sabine: It’s true, especially in the case of the Boa Pouf. It has very strange proportions. It’s also not a sofa, it’s not a chair. It’s kind of nothing. It’s a new typology of object, and it works very well. It sells very well. So I think it’s a proven… What is it? A proof of concept that you don’t need to have a defined market and price point and scale for an object to work.
Tim: How did that collaboration come about?
Sabine: I had actually done a donut-shaped coated foam pouf for an interior project in Milan for a fashion brand and Petrus Palmer, the founder of Hem, saw a picture of that online. Then he reached out to me and was like, “Hey, how do you feel about developing this as an upholstered version?” I was like, “Wow, that would actually be really cool, but under one condition: that it doesn’t have any seams,” because it’s such a perfect infinite shape. It doesn’t have a beginning or an end. So the upholstery also shouldn’t have that. So, yeah, that was the one and only challenge with that object, to make a seamless upholstery for it. It took a few years to make that a reality, working with a very specialized process of 3D knitting so that kind of like a sock was created that goes over it, in a seamless way.
Tim: Wow. So besides this particular project, because it seems that this one had a very specific, let’s say, brief, but when you’ve designed with Hem, have you preferred having a specific brief or more the idea of this carte blanche conversation where you can just come up with an idea?
Sabine: I guess the brief from me to Hem, if anything, instead of being the other way around. The brief was: I will only do it if we can do it seamless.
Tim: Right. Is it like a dialogue between you and the brand, or do you feel more like it’s your thing and the brand is there to produce it, essentially?
Sabine: No, it’s 100% a dialogue. I think the brand provides options and opportunities, that I then steer in the direction to a final result.
Tim: Right, because I think what’s interesting also is when you are a designer who is working with a brand, or when you’re a writer working for a publishing house, whatever, that house that you’re working with has an identity. And so, it’s nice for you to have the conversation with that identity and see how maybe you can create your own personal take on that identity.
Sabine: I didn’t really think of it as in the context of this is Hem, it needs to fit with it, because I also don’t think Hem thinks like that. I think Hem asks different designers to design things for them, and the Hem aesthetic is the accumulation of all those designs.
Tim: Right, what Hem does is essentially select you as well as other people and then just asks you to be yourself. But because of all the people that have been asked, the cumulative final effect is Hem. It’s almost something that you could call generational.
Sabine: You know what, I think what most of the designers have created for Hem have been very bold, but sort of chunky, bold gestures. There is no delicacy in a Hem product.
Tim: Haha. No.
Sabine: It’s like it’s a statement. Even though maybe within other projects, different designers do maybe create more delicate pieces or pieces with more nuance. But I think the pieces become more bold under the direction of Hem.
Tim: So there is maybe a sort of a family effect, something like that.
Sabine: They have a certain feel about them as well.
Tim: Yeah. Do you feel like playfulness is also a concept that goes along with this family feeling?
Sabine: I mean I don’t really take playfulness into account when I’m designing, but I do think the Boa Pouf is very playful because it’s a bit, like, open to interpretation on how it can be used. I’ve been tagged on Instagram by people using it as a yoga aid. Obviously a lot of children love to play in it. Even actually recently a friend sent me a picture that he received from a guy on Grindr using it…
Tim: That’s also playful.
Sabine: It’s playful in many ways.
Tim: As you said, that piece is playful because it invites people to use and interact with the object in non-conventional ways.
Sabine: Absolutely. It’s probably the most playful design I have in my collection of designs.
Tim: Going back to this idea of allowing people to use objects in a more free way and to think about their living space in a more open way. How do you feel about this idea?
Sabine: Well, inherently, the objects we use become part of our life. So, yeah, I agree with it. I think they’ve been, and a lot of us have been, a part of a conversation that purely by creating objects that evoke an emotional response, the general public can also realize that there is function in non-functional things.
