From her curatorial
work to what’s on her
dinner plate, RENNY
RAMAKERS knows
how to thrive on the
spontaneous side of life.
Words
LAUREN GRACE MORRISPortrait
CINDY BAAR9.00 a.m.
RENNY RAMAKERS: I don’t have a strict
daily routine. I never get up at the same
time. I have my meetings and obligations,
of course, but beyond that I keep my days
spontaneous.
When I do wake up, I check my
emails out of pure curiosity. Then I have
breakfast: tea, orange juice and yoghurt
with fruit and granola. It’s not until after
breakfast that I actually respond to the
emails. These days I’ve been unsubscribing
to a lot of rubbish. [Laughs.]
11.00 a.m.
Around 11, I usually have phone calls or
appointments. Right now I’m curating the
multidisciplinary N’Golá festival in São
Tomé, so I’ve been having many interesting
conversations with participating artists,
designers and architects from all over
Africa. São Tomé is a former Portuguese
colony, and that influence is clear cultur-
ally. My goal is to deepen the island’s
connection with the rest of the continent
by attracting more visitors to the event.
My vision lately has gone beyond
Droog and product design; it’s much
broader. I’m interested in doing more things
like the festival. I like that it’s about music,
food, design, everything – you can explore
the relationships between all those things.
Nowadays, the Droog café is my
meeting place, and I work at home. My days
are quieter than at the beginning of Droog
25 years ago. I have regular meetings with
the business manager who runs @Droog,
but I do only the things that I like to do.
I find it very exciting to work with people
I’ve never met before; I always want to learn.
If I can’t learn from a project, I’m bored.
I never plan anything, and I never did: I let it
come to me. You have to take on new oppor-
tunities or else you stay in the past. It’s all
based on intuition.2.00 p.m.
I started learning how to play piano a year
and a half ago. When my teacher comes in
the afternoon, once a week, I take half an
hour to practise beforehand. Right now I’m
learning to play Bach and Schumann. When
I started, I couldn’t read a note – I couldn’t
do anything musical. I wanted to do some-
thing I’d never done before. It’s good for
the brain.
Over many afternoons for half a
year, I devoted my time to a new book
about my work [Renny Ramakers: Rethink-
ing Design]. That took a lot of work. The
people who did the research did a hell of a
job – my archive was often not up to date.
My memory is quite good, but at the begin-
ning of my career, there was no internet to
save all this stuff. The design, done by Irma
Boom, took a long time, too. Especially the
cover, because there was a lot of thought
behind it: my goal from the beginning
was to create a rich, visual book. Recently
I found all kinds of stuff I’d written yearsago that’s not in the bibliography. But what
can you do? [Laughs.] It’s almost impos-
sible to get it totally complete.7.00 p.m.
I live in the centre of Amsterdam, so I walk
or ride my bike to get around. My favourite
restaurant is The Lobby, here in Amsterdam.
I like to go there with friends; sometimes
we do something beforehand, like go to an
exhibition. My days don’t have a regular
order; I like to be surprised.
When I was 22, I was an au pair in
London. When I left the family, I remem-
bered how nice it was that during the entire
time, I never had the same dinner. The
mother cooked something different every
night. I still do the same – I love to study
cookbooks.11.00 p.m.
I never go to bed before I’ve taken a bath
to relax. I try to be in bed around 11, but
I’m an insomniac. So I meditate, make tea
or read. Right now I’m reading a biography
of Nietzsche. It’s quite heavy. [Laughs.] I
don’t know whether I like it – this guy is so
famous, but he was in such a bad health. I
realized I had no idea about what such a life
would have been like and about how much
struggling goes undiscussed. ●Aaron Betsky authored Renny Ramakers: Rethinking
Design, a book available from Lars Müller Publishers
rennyramakers.comA DAY WITH 53