Exploring the Mind of Hella Jongerius at Vitra Design Museum

Hella Jongerius: Whispering Things © Vitra Design Museum. Photos by Bernhard Strauss

For more than 30 years, Dutch designer Hella Jongerius has quietly influenced just about every corner of contemporary design—from textiles and furniture to ceramics, color theory, and the increasingly blurry line between craft and industry. The Vitra Design Museum is spotlighting that legacy with Whispering Things, the first museum exhibition to survey the artist's groundbreaking career.

Featuring more than 400 works from Hella's archive, the exhibition includes furniture, textiles, ceramics, prototypes, sketches, films, and experimental studies developed in collaboration with brands like Maharam, IKEA, KLM, Camper, Nike, and Vitra. The works trace Hella’s evolution from the 1990s, with the Dutch design collective Droog, to the more sculptural, emotionally charged ceramic pieces she’s creating today.

According to Glenn Adamson, curator at large at the Vitra Design Museum, the timing felt especially right for this retrospective. The museum recently acquired Hella’s archive, revealing what Glenn describes as the “depth and range” of her career. But he also points to her lasting influence on younger designers, particularly those interested in ethics, ecology, material experimentation, and more thoughtful forms of production.

That idea sits at the heart of the exhibition’s title, Whispering Things. Hella herself suggested the name, which Glenn says reflects her belief that design doesn’t need to scream to have impact. “There is the idea of things communicating among themselves and to us in ways that we can notice if we pay closer attention,” he explains.

The exhibition unfolds across four immersive sections—Dirty Hands, Business Class, Feeling Eye, and Cosmic Mind—that chart Hella’s fascination with texture, imperfection, color, tactility, and the emotional lives of objects. One gallery will showcase approximately 300 Coloured Vases alongside woven textiles and paper studies that explore color as a shifting, relational experience. Another section focuses on her collaborations with major global companies—not just the finished products, but also the messy, fascinating process behind them.

Importantly, Whispering Things doesn’t present design as something polished and untouchable. Sketches, material tests, and prototypes appear throughout the exhibition, allowing visitors to see ideas evolve in real time. Glenn compares the experience to watching a director’s commentary track on a film: revealing, personal, and surprisingly relatable.

One of the exhibition’s most striking moments may come from Hella’s newer sculptural works, including her Angry Animals series. Developed in part at the European Ceramic Work Centre, the monumental ceramic creatures reflect her concerns about environmental destruction and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Three of the sculptures will also be installed outdoors in the new Water Garden on the Vitra Campus later this year.

At a moment when the design world is increasingly obsessed with speed, trends, and constant newness, Whispering Things feels refreshingly introspective. Hella’s work asks visitors to slow down, pay attention, and reconsider the personal and ethical dimensions of the objects surrounding them every day.

Whispering Things is on view at the Vitra Design Museum until Sept. 6, 2026.

—Murrye Bernard