Watch our talk with Gropius Bau and Hella Jongerius about weaving as a healing process
Dezeen teamed up with the Gropius Bau museum for a live talk with Hella Jongerius to celebrate the opening of her Woven Cosmos exhibition.
Jongerius' weaving practice is the subject of an exhibition at the Gropius Bau in Berlin that showcases work produced by the Dutch designer on-site at the museum.
Named Woven Cosmos, the show explores how craft practices can act as healing processes and how they can be used in the search for sustainable solutions for the future.
"Through Woven Cosmos I try to understand the cultural meaning of weaving beyond materials and technique," Jongerius said of the exhibition.
"This is also deeply linked to the challenges of our time: questions of sustainability, social responsibility and spirituality. For instance: what can be the healing function of objects?"
The exhibit includes a number of installations including a loom designed to weave three-dimensional structures to be used as architectural elements and a user-activated installation that will develop over the course of the show.
Moderated by Dezeen's founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, the panel featured Jongerius and Stephanie Rosenthal, director of the Gropius Bau and co-curator of Woven Cosmos.
The panel disucssed the work on show, Jongerius' experience working on-site at the Gropius Bau and her design philosophy, which spans design, sustainability and spiritualism.
The talk also explored the healing properties of arts, design and crafts against urgent issues facing the world and the role of artistic research in sustainable solutions.
Jongerius is a Dutch industrial designer who is known for her work with colour, weaving and textiles.
Based in Berlin, Jongerius founded her design studio Jongeriuslab in 1993 and has since produced work such as the Polder sofa for Vitra and even the cabin interiors for Dutch airline KLM.
In 2020, Jongerius featured in Dezeen's first podcast series Face to Face, where she explained why she thinks the design industry is "slow, boring and bullshit".
Rosenthal is a German art historian who took the reins at the Gropius Bau in 2018, after ten years as the chief curator at the Hayward Gallery in London.
The Gropius Bau is reopening its doors following coronavirus restrictions in the German capital, with an exhibition programme that includes Woven Cosmos and a major retrospective on iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
Hella Jongerius: Woven Cosmos is on from 29 April to 5 September 2021 at the Gropius Bau in Berlin. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
This talk was produced by Dezeen for Gropius Bau as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen's partnership content here.