Ideal House
Date: 2005
Commissioned by: imm cologne, Germany
Type: Project
Designer Hella Jongerius believes there’s no such thing as the ideal house. After all, what room is there for desire if perfection has already been achieved? Ideal is by definition open, a projection into the future, and it must remain as such. “I could say of my own house that it is functioning well at this moment, and is therefore ideal for me. But how can I determine that for others? Moreover, I keep all options open, even in my own house.” For this reason she decided, in close cooperation with architect Herman Verkerk and designer Arian Brekveld (who designs at Jongeriuslab), to materialize the concept of changeability. Changeability that contains within it both histories and unknown possibilities. At the end of each story there comes a comma, after which the story continues. Likewise after every table, chair, sofa, after every mp3 player, educational course, after every job, after every vase a new desire follows. The Jongerius ideal highlights the comma.
The visitor moves through a series of floating walls that hang in succession like building façades or the side wings in a theatre. The walls are constructed using the familiar grid framework and therefore contain a sea of storage space. The living spaces, which cut straight through the walls, are empty, while the domestic accessories are hidden away within the walls. The products are an assortment of flea-market finds, furniture that has been circulating in the family for hundreds of years, deliberately chosen works by colleague designers, and even the occasional disposable product: an archive of memory and a warehouse full of possibilities. A selection of products by Jongerius herself can also be found in the archive, among which the latest ceramic work designed in commission for Von Nymphenburg and Makkom. They display all the hallmarks that have earned Jongerius international acclaim: an exceptional feel for material, detail, color and ornamentation, a combination of past and future, centuries-old crafts and high-tech industrial production techniques. You might describe the work as feminine, and “that is precisely what these times call for,” says Jongerius.
Women are in short supply at the top of the design world. Despite this the Cologne organizers asked two of them for their visions of the ideal house in 2005. “They could have done that years ago. Naturally a man can also possess ‘feminine’ characteristics, and of course a female designer also needs some ‘male’ characteristics to really achieve something in this business. But as cliché as it might sound, at this point in time we need the sensitive handwriting that we have come to describe as feminine.”