Hella Jongerius
The experimental designer.
Hella Jongerius works with colour, textiles and imperfection and has collaborated with Vitra and KLM.
Hella Jongerius was born in 1963 in De Meern near Utrecht in the Netherlands. She trained at the Design Academy Eindhoven, graduating in 1993. While she was still a student her work was shown by the Dutch design collective Droog Design, which challenged the idea of perfect industrial products. Her Soft Urn, a vase in soft rubber, was an early success.
That same year she set up her own studio, Jongeriuslab, first in Rotterdam and from 2008 in Berlin. She became known for combining industrial production with the traces and imperfections of craft. She made porcelain with deliberately uneven glazes, embroidered tablecloths whose stitches continue onto the porcelain, and objects that mix old and new techniques.
Since 2007 she has been art director for colours and materials at the furniture company Vitra, and she has designed the Polder sofa. She also designed the business-class cabin interiors of KLM's aircraft and helped renew one of the delegates' lounges at the UN headquarters in New York. Colour is central to her work, and she has criticised the industry's standardised colour systems. Her book on colour is called I Don't Have a Favourite Colour.
In recent years Jongerius has worked increasingly with weaving and textiles as research into material and structure. She has had exhibitions at venues including the Design Museum in London. Today she is seen as one of the most influential designers of her generation.