Dutch designer Hella Jongerius combines her love of textile and colour in a new exhibition at London’s Design Museum. Corinne Julius visits the foray into material and perception in COVER 48. An abridged extract follows.
Textile is my love,’ says designer Hella Jongerius. ‘Textile is a material, but it’s also half about fabrication. It’s not a finished material; after I finish it, someone else uses it and transforms it into furniture. It has options. Working with textile is abstract, it’s algebra, a 0:1 computer language. It starts so rational, but at the end is so atmospheric. I find it very interesting. It is interwoven into our culture and our language.’
Jongerius, now a hugely influential designer, graduated from the Eindhoven Design Academy in 1993 and immediately started her own studio, Jongeriuslab. She joined the Dutch Design collective Droog, investigating how industrial design might better respond to consumers’ emotional needs rather than just their physical ones. ‘I wanted to try to make products you really loved, that you wanted to have for your whole life, and to pass down to your family.’
‘Breathing Colour,’ is based on 15 years of research into how colour behaves and exploring the effects that light conditions have on perceptions of colour and form. The exhibition is divided into separate installations that simulate daylight conditions in the morning, at noon and in the evening to explore the impact of changing daylight on colour perception. Each area includes a series of three-dimensional objects as well as textiles, some of which are handwoven while others are produced on industrial looms.
Read more in COVER 48.
