The Unofficial IKEA Web Journal

Visiting Germany, I always wondered where my relatives kept their shoes
since their entryways were always uber clean. No shoes scattered about or
arranged on shelves along the floor. In fact, no shoes anywhere. Ah….but I was
wrong. They were hiding.  

 

IKEA offers a clever storage solution for shoes that want to play hide and
seek. Before, we could never purchase these in the states, but I guess word
broke out that Americans aren’t total slobs and also enjoy clutter-free spaces.
I checked out IKEA yesterday in the Stoughton, MA store and I have to admit that
these storage units were flying out of there to nest little shoes all
over.  

Holly

Visit her blog, decor8

“IKEA wasn’t just one of the first mass-market companies to sell design, it was
also among the first to sell designers, running their names–and often
black-and-white pictures of them–alongside each product. The MoMA Store, on the
other hand, has relied less on designers’ names than on the beauty and
functionality of their objects. The result is that while MoMA offers a limited,
highly edited collection of goods, Ikea offers thousands of items designed for
different needs and tastes.

 

How do these different retail philosophies affect which designers’ products
are carried in each store? On Monday, May 16, as part of Metropolis’s “Next
Generation: Crossing Cultures” seminar, Lars Engman, the design manager of
Ikea’s PS Collection, and Bonnie Mackay, the creative and marketing director of
MoMA Retail, discussed the ways that they search for new products and
talent.

 

For designers in the audience aspiring to a place on either store’s
shelves, there were two messages: Make It And They Will Come, or Send It Out And
Pray That They Chose It From The Pile…” 

“The SHRIMP (Sustainable Housing for Refugees via Mass Production) is an
attempt to bring housing and other relief to large displaced or homeless
populations, especially those who have suffered in a natural disaster. Providing
shelter to a family of four, it folds up into 1/4 of a shipping container for
efficient deployment. (cross sectional model pictured above)

 

Taking cues from IKEA’s flat-packing furniture, this shelter starts its
life as a 10′ x 9.5′ x 8′ box, or exactly 1/4 of a “hi-cube” shipping container.
Because of this standard size and self-contained design, the SHRIMP can be
dispatched in extreme quantity; Maersk container ships, for example, can hold
6,400 containers.”  

Vestal Design

LINK