Perfection is uninteresting, thinks designer Hella Jongerius. The Dutch designer's work is hand-crafted, innovative… and never finished. A book and exhibition of her work are both entitled Misfit.

The grinding screech of a tram fills the air in the Kastanien Allee, a lively street in the east of Berlin. “Yes, it is so nice to leave your own culture and see a new world. Emigrating is something I would recommend to everyone once in their lifetime,” says designer Hella Jongerius. For the last two and a half years she has been living and working in Berlin.

“What I really like about living here is that it suits my work. It's unfinished, it's a bit rough. The pavements are broken, there are posters hanging off lamp posts, squats covered in graffiti. I really feel at home here.”

Her studio is in a courtyard. It has lots of glass, high ceilings and work tables. There are towering storage shelves filled with objects she designed. Shoes, vases, material, glass, plates and beakers. Some are finished some are not.

Unique
Hella Jongerius’s work can be found in exclusive interior design shops, as well as at the Swedish furniture chainstore Ikea. Museums around the world have bought her designs. The Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterrdam and the Museum of Modern Art in New York have extensive collections.

The Rotterdam museum is showing an overview of her work entitled Misfit from 13 November 2010 until 13 February 2011. MoMa's architecture and design curator Paola Antonelli comments:

"I consider Hella Jongerius one of the most important designers in the world. Especially in this time. She is able to take many different ideas and bring it together in wonderful synthesis. Let's skip for a moment how beautiful her works are, but let's think about how she is able to take craft and high technology and put them together in the same object. Inspiration from eastern Africa translated into a western object. All the ideas from the Dutch tradition that are all of a sudden given a completely new life. She is really unique and how she is able to show the world that tradition, modernity, high technology, low technology can go together, especially today in our contemporary life."

Before she came to Berlin, Ms Jongerius had a flourishing design company in Rotterdam. “I had a very good team. I still do. But there I was a kind of people manager. I couldn’t concentrate on my research.” Now, with just an assistant around her, she can get on with her work.

Wonky
She sets her own course “which does not fit within limits. I always try to push the borders, by taking a different look at things.” In her studio, she has a set of broken-white crockery she designed. She wanted to make an imperfect set in response to standard industrial production.

She set the ovens to a higher temperature than normal. “this gives every piece a slightly different appearance to the next piece. It is a bit wonky and you can see that the pile of plates wobbles a little.” The production code is printed on top of the plate not hidden underneath it.

Difficult
Ms Jongerius is often away, visiting clients in other European countries and the United States.

“When a company asks me to make something, I always ask them: haven’t you just bought a new chair? Why don’t you want something else? Or: which machine haven’t you used for a long time?”

Do clients find her difficult? “Well, sometimes they might have scratched their heads, I’m sure about that,” she admits with a laugh.

Hella Jongerius' design website

Boijmans van Beuningen Museum (in English)

'Misfit' publisher