Vitra Design Museum
Until September 6, 2026

Hella Jongerius is among the most influential designers of the past decades. Since the start of her career in the 1990s, she has created groundbreaking works in many different disciplines, including textiles, ceramics, furniture, lighting, and sculpture. Jongerius’ research-driven approach has been a defining influence for an entire generation of young contemporary designers. The exhibition is the first retrospective of Jongerius’ oeuvre and explores all phases of her work, including her famed collaborations with Maharam, KLM, Camper, and Vitra. It is based on Jongerius’ studio archive, acquired by the Vitra Design Museum in 2024. Exhibits will include furniture, textiles, ceramics, sketches, prototypes, and films. The center stage, though, goes to the methods of JongeriusLab—layering ideas, drawing connections, emphasizing materiality, exposing process, and researching deeply, with a dedication to craft, color, and cosmic thinking.

The exhibition follows Jongerius’ evolution from her beginnings in the Dutch avant garde group Droog Design in the 1990s, through her rise in the 2000s as a successful product and textile designer, to the deeply personal works of recent years that challenge the boundaries between design and art. Throughout her career, Jongerius has developed a distinct design language marked by complexity and an aesthetic of collage and layering, in which the diversity of materials is as essential as the expressive power of the handmade and the imperfect.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major publication, including a documentation of the Jongerius archive at the Vitra Design Museum.

https://www.design-museum.de/en/exhibitions/detailpages/hella-jongerius-whispering-things.html

Advertisement