Tens of thousands of people see Maarten Baas’ clock in the departure hall at Schiphol Airport every day. The clock with the little man in it who redraws the time every minute. The clock is a real hit for the designer. There is already one at Paddington Station in London and music icon Peter Gabriël recently called to ask whether Maarten could make such a clock for his tour in the US. Well of course that was possible. In view of the Design Week that starts next week, Maarten Baas will be a guest on Wednesday evening in the TV program KRAAK Asks Door.
Maarten Baas’ clock at Schiphol:
The clock is a keeper, but there is so much more to the ‘Boss universe’. There are video installations and there is even an apartment complex he designed in Eindhoven. The conversation takes place in his workshop in Den Bosch, at the table he once designed for VPRO’s Zomergasten’. “It’s nice to now be interviewed at that table.”
More than 25 years ago, Maarten Baas came to Eindhoven for the Design Academy. A study he looks back on with mixed feelings. “I felt what I wanted, but you had to constantly be accountable. To a teacher every week with your work. When I imagine that now: I don’t want to think about it. I make something, and when it’s done you’ll see what it has become.”
Maarten was wayward then and he has remained so. “I rely on my own feelings, no matter how scary that is sometimes.” For example, it was very exciting, shortly after his graduation. He immediately made his international breakthrough with his graduation project Smoke, black, half-burnt furniture. “But after that, of course, all eyes were on me,” he says. “Show me that you can do something other than setting furniture on fire.”
He came with Clay, furniture as a child would draw it. “I had safer designs in the drawer, but I thought if I’m successful with that, then I’m on the wrong train, because that’s not actually what I want.” So they became Clay’s naive-looking chairs and tables and it became a great success. It is an important theme for Maarten as a designer: the open-mindedness of the child. “I wanted those furniture to reflect the purity of a child’s drawing.”
He himself notices that this open-mindedness is sometimes more difficult to achieve as he gets older. “You have a company, employees and all kinds of obligations.” But he has also learned that it pays to follow his feelings. And so he continues to ‘play’. In that warehouse on an industrial estate in Den Bosch. And it can go either way every day.
KRAAK Asks Door is broadcast every Wednesday at 5:15 PM and repeated afterwards. The program can also be watched online and via Brabant+.