Materiality, Process and the Poetics of Design

The exhibition Hella Jongerius: Whispering Things at the Vitra Design Museum offers a comprehensive retrospective of the Dutch designer Hella Jongerius, whose work over more than three decades has profoundly shaped contemporary design discourse. Known for her distinctive approach that bridges craft traditions and industrial production, Jongerius has developed a design language rooted in material experimentation, chromatic sensitivity, and a deep engagement with the cultural meanings of everyday objects. The exhibition provides an opportunity not only to encounter her most significant works but also to understand the conceptual frameworks that underpin her practice.

Born in 1963 in the Netherlands, Hella Jongerius studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven, an institution widely recognized for fostering experimental and conceptual approaches to design. After graduating, she established Jongeriuslab in Rotterdam in 1993, marking the beginning of a career characterized by interdisciplinary exploration across textiles, ceramics, furniture, lighting, and spatial design. From the outset, Jongerius questioned the conventional hierarchy between handmade and industrially produced objects. Rather than privileging one over the other, her work investigates how the expressive qualities of craft can coexist with the efficiencies of industrial manufacturing. This inquiry has remained central throughout her career and has informed collaborations with internationally recognized companies such as Maharam, KLM, Camper, and Vitra. These partnerships demonstrate how her experimental methods can be translated into large-scale production while preserving individuality and material authenticity.

Whispering Things represents the first major retrospective to present the full breadth of Jongerius’s oeuvre, ranging from early student experiments to recent projects developed in collaboration with industry partners. A significant portion of the exhibition draws on the archive of Jongeriuslab, which has been under the stewardship of the Vitra Design Museum since 2024. By presenting sketches, prototypes, material tests, and finished products alongside one another, the exhibition foregrounds design as an iterative process rather than a linear progression toward a final object. This curatorial approach encourages viewers to consider the experimental nature of design practice and highlights the importance of failure, revision, and sustained inquiry.

One of the central themes emerging from the exhibition is Jongerius’s engagement with materiality. Her work demonstrates a sustained interest in the tactile and visual properties of materials, particularly ceramics and textiles. Surfaces are often intentionally irregular, revealing traces of manual intervention even within industrial contexts. This deliberate incorporation of variation challenges the modernist ideal of uniformity that historically dominated industrial production. Instead, Jongerius proposes an alternative aesthetic that values imperfection as a marker of authenticity and human presence. Such an approach aligns with broader contemporary debates on sustainability and longevity, emphasizing the emotional durability of objects as a counterpoint to disposable consumer culture.

Color constitutes another defining element of Jongerius’s practice, and the exhibition dedicates significant attention to her research into chromatic systems. Rather than treating color as a decorative afterthought, Jongerius approaches it as a structural and communicative component of design. Her layered color palettes often result from extensive experimentation with dyes, pigments, and weaving techniques. Through subtle shifts in tone and texture, she explores how color influences perception, spatial experience, and emotional response. In this context, color becomes a medium through which objects acquire identity and narrative depth.

The title Whispering Things encapsulates the exhibition’s underlying premise: objects possess the capacity to communicate through their material presence, construction, and use. The exhibition runs until September 9.

Hella Jongerius: Whispering Things © Vitra Design Museum Graphic Design: Joost Grootens based on the work Falling Vases Paintings by Hella Jongerius.