Sabine Marcelis
Forever in search of magical moments within materiality and production processes to create unexpected experiences, Sabine Marcelis is a New Zealand-raised Dutch designer who runs her practice from the harbor of Rotterdam. After graduating from the Design Academy of Eindhoven in 2011, Marcelis began working as an independent designer within the fields of product, installation and spatial design with a strong focus on materiality. Her work is characterized by pure forms which highlight material properties.
Marcelis applies a strong aesthetic point of view to her collaborations with industry specialists. This method of working allows her to intervene in the manufacturing process, using material research and experimentation to achieve new and surprising visual effects for projects both showcased in museums and commissioned by commercial clients and fashion houses. Marcelis considers her designs to be true sensorial experiences and strives to create a dialogue between the object and the user: the experience becomes the function, with a refined and unique aesthetic.
Marcelis is the recipient of two prestigious Wallpaper* awards: Designer of the Year 2020 and the 2019 Design Prize for Newcomer of the Year, as well as the ELLE DECOR International Design Award for Young Designer of the Year and GQ’s International Artist of the Year, both in 2019. She has also been selected as a mentor for the 2021 Lexus Design Award, the international design competition for the world’s emerging designers.
Her work has been exhibited at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam and Musee des art Decoratif, Paris. Her custom project client list includes CELINE, Isabel Marant, Aesop, Burberry, A. Lange & Söhne, and Salle Privée.
The Shapes of Water: FENDI
Since 2008, FENDI has supported limited edition creativity and design through its partnership with Design Miami/. To mark the 10-year anniversary of this partnership, the luxury Maison partnered with Marcelis to present ‘The Shapes of Water,’ a project by dedicated to rediscover water as a design tool, whose delicate beauty the designer has magnified by realizing ten fountains inspired by ten of the most iconic symbols of the historical Roman house.
Further celebrating the 10th anniversary of the ‘Peekaboo’ bag, FENDI gave Marcelis carte blanche to reinterpret the iconic style, transforming it from a white canvas version into a design masterpiece. Marcelis chose to freeze the design within a resin block, preserving a hint of functionality within this new sculptural object by only encapsulating the lower volume of the bag. The translucent resin colour exaggerated the three-dimensionality of the shape frozen within.
The customized Peekaboo bags customized by Marcelis and four other international artists debuted at the FENDI boutique in the Miami Design District, displayed on special podiums in hues of yellow designed by Marcelis herself.
FENDI x Sabine Marcelis
FENDI x Sabine Marcelis
It is through clean and soft lines and the use of ethereal materials such as polished resin and water in contrast with the historical travertine stone, and warm colors reminiscent of the Roman skies, that the fountains of Sabine Marcelis represent the perfect fusion between the historical, creative and aesthetic legacy of FENDI and its courage to provoke.— FENDI
Now, more than ever, innovative design-led ideas will play an important role in shaping our future. I cannot wait to guide and help shape and realize these ideas…putting a focus on sustainable production processes and innovative and environmentally friendly material choices.— Sabine Marcelis
FENDI x Sabine Marcelis
The designer has choreographed them in such a way that as one walks through the space these differences are noticeable, giving the installation both visual and acoustic qualities. The serene simplicity of the fountains is deceptive, however; a complex mechanism provides the magic unseen.— Wallpaper*
24 Hours: A. Lange & Söhne
Marcelis transformed an annular Spanish villa into a large-scale installation for luxury watch label, A. Lange & Söhne. Titled ‘24 Hours,’ the piece utilized the circular building and an abundance of natural light to create a luminous and reflective timepiece.
Designed by Belgian architects Kersten Geers and David van Severen of Office KGDVS, the villa is part of Solo Houses, an architectural endeavor in the mountainous region of Matarraña, Spain consisting of 15 buildings to date, each designed by an emerging international architect. Geers and van Severen’s concrete and glass building was designed with environmental harmony in mind, emphasizing the natural surroundings.
The 45-meter diameter of the hollow circular building provided the perfect space for Marcelis’s timepiece, created to celebrate the release of A. Lange & Söhne’s Datograph Up/Down ‘Lumen,’ in collaboration with Openhouse Magazine. ‘24 Hours’ draws together light, color and form in an explorative sundial that works by way of a cleverly placed obelisk. Situated at the center of the courtyard, the colored mirrored glass obelisk tells the time by casting varying gradients of yellow and blue onto the soil throughout the day.
A. Lange Söhne x Sabine Marcelis: 24 Hours
Limited edition pieces and site-specific work are my main focus right now. It’s liberating – and that’s very important to me. Being able to move on to other projects gives me a real sense of freedom in my work.— Sabine Marcelis
A. Lange & Söhne x Sabine Marcelis: 24 Hours
These simple gestures of reflection, shadow, refraction, fusion – it’s all made possible simply because of the existence of light.— Sabine Marcelis
A. Lange & Söhne x Sabine Marcelis: 24 Hours
The Green Life: La Rinascente, Milan
For Milan Design Week 2019, Marcelis collaborated with La Rinascente, Milan’s historic designer department store in Piazza Duomo, on its second edition of The Green Life, a sustainable showing created to make clients reflect on increasingly urgent environmental issues. Marcelis created three activations that engaged the store’s interiors and exteriors:
La Rinascente x Sabine Marcelis: The Green Life
Marcelis created a boulevard of 16 huge century-old olive trees in the outside area between the store and the Duomo as an homage to Italian vegetation. The Boulevard Installation gifted passersby with a peaceful moment of relaxation amidst the greenery, where Marcelis’s seats in various shades of orange punctuated the often-crowded space.
La Rinascente x Sabine Marcelis: The Green Life
Colorful disks of plexiglass twist and float around the many kinds of plants and trees, overlapping to contribute to a constant changing and alternating of colors. As a result, a dance is created where color and nature take the lead.— Designboom
Marcelis installed eight moving sculptures in La Rinascente’s display windows, called The Plant Ballet, that existed in perfect harmony with the boulevard, featuring plants and trees of diverse species with multicolored plexiglass discs. The discs become brightly colored statues inviting visitors inside, overlapping to contribute to a constant changing and alternating of colors and creating a biological dance led by color and nature.
Marcelis continued the triumphant greenery inside with Plants are in the Air, bringing two in-store installations to the Design Supermarket and to the fourth floor with a curated exhibition area alongside the retail spaces with tropical plants, succulents, aromatics, rare species, and miniature trees that can be both admired and purchased.
The three projects confirm Sabine Marcelis’s approach to design, providing an authentic sensorial experience transcending static simplicity with a unique and refined aesthetic.— ELLE DECOR
IKEA: Art Event Collection 2021
Ikea launches its latest Art Event Collection, presenting a range of domestic objects that blur the boundaries between art and design. The collection features new work by Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis, multidisciplinary creative Daniel Arsham, as well as artists Gelthop, Humans Since 1982 and Stefan Marx.
Wallpaper* Design Awards judge Sabine Marcelis’ pair of wall sconces is based on the interaction between light and colour, with a warm chromatic glow elevating the experience of the piece.
Art places an important part in our everyday lives; it triggers emotions, sparks conversations. Having this imaginative space and time in our lives enriches us as human beings. This collection explores the sweet spot between art and design.— Henrik Most, Creative Leader at IKEA
Barcelona Pavilion
Objects
Marcelis is represented by Etage Projects in Copenhagen, Gallery Bensimon in Paris, Mint Gallery in London, Side Gallery in Barcelona, and Victor Hunt Gallery in Brussels.
Her lights and mirrors focus on the use of circular shapes to project illumination and reflection. With resin, glass, and neon her pieces stand out in a variety of colorways and slightly off-kilter structures giving them a natural, almost organic feel. It’s a beautiful study in light and color.— Visual Pleasure Magazine
Her practice has mainly been based on capturing the wide-ranging effects of light hitting curiously diverse types of mass. Her pieces have thus become an intellectually hearty and chromatically thrilling condensation of large-scale natural happenstances, such as the moment sunlight converses with the mountains and the sea, into functional objects and compact installations brought down to their essence.— Wallpaper*
Inspiration can spark from anywhere, often in the form of the smallest, most unexpected details when I’m traveling. Nature is also a huge source of inspiration, like when the sun meets a passing cloud and creates this magical, changing moment. That’s why I love working with glass and cast resins, because of the way they interact with light.— Sabine Marcelis
