SpeakerHella Jongerius is a renowned Dutch industrial designer known for her inventive approach to products. She graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in 1993. She rose to prominence soon after graduating with a series of her designs being produced by the influential Dutch conceptual design collective, Droog Design. Jongerius started her own design company, Jongeriuslab, in 1993 in Rotterdam, and in 2009 moved to Berlin.
She has worked for many prestigious clients, including KLM, Vitra, Maharam, Royal Tichelaar Makkum, and Nymphenburg, and her work is held in the collections of MoMA New York, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the V&A Museum in London, amongst many others.
Jongerius’ designs a range of products, including furniture, lighting, glassware, ceramics, and textiles. Her work combines the traditional with the contemporary, the newest technologies with age-old craft techniques. Jongerius is also fascinated by the value of deviations from perfection, the misfits, the individual character that products can assume. In most of her products, she succeeds in creating this individual character by including elements of craft in the industrial production process.
Jongerius has appeared in countless international design magazines, recently Wallpaper ranked her 2nd on their annual ‘power list’ of designers. Phaidon published her eponymous first book in 2003. Misfit, her second Phaidon monograph, was published in 2010.
Since 2008 Jongerius has worked as art director for colours, textiles and surfaces at Vitra (Basel, Switzerland). In 2012 she worked on a new interior for business class in KLM’s Boeing 747 fleet. 2013 also saw her collaborating with fellow Dutch creative Rem Koolhaas on a new interior for the North Delegates' Lounge in the UN headquarters New York as well as being appointed as design director for Dutch rug firm Danskina.
She is a veteran of the Design Indaba, having first been a speaker at the conference in 2007.