We spend a lot time debating and wondering where design is going, what are the scenes or events or design weeks where the “next chapter” might spring from: losing focus is the most predictable consequence. Asking those who are actually doing all this – the product, the reflection and the scene – can actually come to our rescue.
Sabine Marcelis needs no introduction, but we can add that she has also been a host of this year's Design Biennale Rotterdam.

The event does not spring from the presence of a school as in Eindhoven, the epicenter of Dutch Design Week: Rotterdam is more developed as an architectural scene. Still, not only it exists as a design scene, but is also defined more by attitude than aesthetics: in design terms, it is a making scene. “You have an idea; you just try to make it happen”. It has come about through a process of osmosis: the place didn't have much to offer in terms of interesting spots or anything else, still there was a lot of physical space available, and there was the proximity to the industries of a major port city, industries that could easily be involved in the production of new design.

Having a design biennale in Rotterdam has allowed so many creatives who are based in the city, but always exhibiting elsewhere, to show their work in its original environment, allowing a local scene to look in the mirror and understand its own identity. “There is not a single aesthetic, I don't think you can really put a trend on Rotterdam”, Marcelis says, “which I love”.
It is a scene that is generous, extremely diverse, international – “probably not even a third of the people there are actually Dutch” – resisting the negativity that the global market imposes on design: “There is a tendency of the world, sort of turning into one aesthetic because everything is so visible. You are in a coffee place in Thailand, and it looks like you could be in Australia, which is really sad. We need to really foster what is unique about local scenes”.

This city, made up of large, often disused industrial or public spaces, has managed to bring together the power of design and locations, making something tangible out of these two concepts, something different from the location hype machine we have become accustomed to. For Marcelis, the exhibition “This is us” – its title came directly from the slogan of local football team Feyenoord – hosted in the large modernist cluster of the Groot Handelsgebouw is the one that best summed up the peculiar character of the scene, as did Johannes Offerhaus’ installation, which rewrote the idea of intimacy with his movable textiles in the spaces of the Katoenhuis; then came the exhibition curated by Barry Llewellyn at W70, dedicated to new perspectives on ornament, which for Marcelis describes as capable of giving “a sense of freedom in such a heavy world, where also design has become a heavy place”.

It is in fact undeniable that the foundations of community, exchange and experimentation that really created design scenes, in Rotterdam as in Milan or Berlin, have been recently undermined by all kinds of difficulties. One of them is the unaffordability of cities, where ten years ago one could not worry about rents that now have become the main obstacle to any existence. “We’re losing that moment in the beginning of your career when you are able to just freely design, and explore, and have fun with it”, says Marcelis, who also admits that “maybe it also cultivates much more innovative ways of designing”. Another difficulty lies in the industry itself: the specific ease to produce designs from images, mostly AI-generated, completely unrelated to any production process. “If we lose touch with how you optimize the use of machineries or a process, then we’re going to be just losing a lot of clever ways of design. The type of design that I really like is when you can tell the production process has been a driving force in it, and it has somehow shaped the aesthetics and the form language. And I hope to see a lot more of that”.

For Marcelis, who has always accepted the challenge of “disrupting the industry”, of accessing production processes and transforming them through experimentation (as she “will not take ‘no’ for an answer”), these are the core points of a designer’s practice: keeping close to the realm of making, to the collaborative process of developing projects – all the turning points of her career are linked to moments of growth of her studio, she tells us – and to finding new ways of expression. No surprise when, as we ask her about her reference icons, she immediately mentions the Panton chair (“Groundbreaking production wise, when it was invented; it's really an invention”), but also the “3 to 5 seconds” mirror created by Jenny Nordberg with a single splash of silver on a sheet of glass: “It's so simple and it's like one gesture with such a little use of materials, and (all pieces) are unique”.

Then what about Milan Design Week just around the corner? What’s the scene Marcelis is about to join, now for the tenth time? It is a scene that has been widely challenged since the dawning of the Airbnb era, she tells us, by much more people attending and endless queues, “and I don't think anyone should have to queue in a line to see something”. While everything seems to scream “go big”, there seems to be a need to refocus. “What is also in danger of happening because everything has to be so big and impactful, is that subtle, small design objects, or gestures, might get a bit lost in the circus. (While) I think there is such beauty in subtlety”.

In fact, she has chosen to focus on “something small” for Milan Design Week 2025, and once again, it's a challenge to the industry: let's see if small things can make it through the circus.