Corner Sofa BedSmall Corner Sofa IdeasIkea Couch BedIkea Sofa Bed FrihetenSmall Sofa BedSmall Den IdeasDen SmallIkea FutonRoom SmallForwardThe only problem with this one is that it doesn't have slipcovers. Tom Dixon wanted to redesign the coffin. More specifically, the British industrial designer wanted to fashion a coffin and have Ikea produce and distribute it. But also kind of poetic: Retail analysts once posited that one in ten Europeans are conceived in an Ikea bed. If life begins with Ikea, Dixon thought, perhaps life should end that way, with people being laid to rest in reasonably priced Swedish caskets. “I had this idea of birth ‘til death,” he says.Dixon partnered with the company anyway, and turned his attention to another thing people lie prostrate on: beds. The Delaktig bed, seen in detail here for the first time, can convert into a sofa, a chaise, or even a luxurious dog bed. Grooves in the aluminum frame allow for clip-on furniture additions, like side tables and privacy screens.
The frame’s design makes Delaktig endlessly configurable—so long as you have stuff to reconfigure it with, which you will, if you buy things from Ikea and Tom Dixon. It’s no coffin, but Dixon’s “birth ‘til death” idea is an apt metaphor for the furniture giant’s mission: Whatever you do in life, Ikea really wants you to do it on its furniture. So far, Ikea has chased that goal by attempting to saturate the market. Today, the retailer operates 392 stores across 48 countries. Beyond perennial bestsellers like the Billy bookshelf and the Malm bed, Ikea annually rolls out its limited edition PS collections of spiffy, colorful pieces aimed at apartment-dwelling millennials. It ships flat-packed shelters to refugee camps. In-house, Ikea has a team forecasting how people might live 10 years from now. Still, one group eludes Ikea: hackers. “We know that people want to make things different, to have their own identity,” says James Futcher, creative director on Delaktig.
But to do that, consumers have for years turned to IkeaHackers, the unaffiliated but robust online community where Ikea fans share clever ways to recast the Swedish furniture staples. Ikea has a funny relationship with its fan site. In 2014, the retailer sent IkeaHackers a cease-and-desist letter, citing infringement of intellectual property rights. Online backlash from fans ensued, and Ikea backed down. Then, one year later, at its Democratic Design Day press event in Sweden, Ikea showed reporters a prototype for a hacking kit. It would come with an online guide of Ikea-curated ideas for transforming your furniture, with parts sold at Ikea. That kit never launched, but Ikea plans to start selling Delaktig in early 2018. It’s not the world’s first modular sofa, but it is Ikea’s first to-market attempt to harness some control over (and profit from) the way people modify its wares. “We can’t stop people from doing this,” Futcher says. The next best thing, it seems, is to sell stuff to enable it.
Ikea’s initial line of add-ons will come from the company and from students at the Royal College of Arts in London, the Parsons School of Design in New York, and Musashino Art University in Tokyo. Futcher and Dixon don’t yet know which student designs will make it to manufacturing, but so far have seen the Delaktig as a bunk bed, airport seating, and even a human-sized Faraday cage. Dixon says his studio will put out luxury peripherals like marble countertop side tables or leather sofa cushions—stuff Ikea wouldn’t sell, because of the cost. Ikea selling hackable furniture has the ring of a parent telling a teenager that if he’s going to drink, it’s better that it be in the house. But it’s a logical next step for the retailer. “I’m not totally surprised it has come to this,” says Jules Yap, who founded IkeaHackers. Yap calls it a good move on Ikea’s part, and points out that Ikea’s knockdown design and low prices have always invited hacking anyway. It’s in the company’s design DNA.
The Delaktig and all its components just formalize the process. That formality could attract shoppers, or not. “People hack Ikea for so many different reasons,” Yap says. “But I think there is this satisfaction of creating something totally different than what is mass produced.” If Ikea wants to play a part in that satisfaction, it will need to design for serendipity. Delaktig seems like a promising start. The aluminum for the frame comes from Volvo’s supplier, so consumers can expect it to last a long time. More time means more potential for enterprising hackers to fashion new add-on components. All the better if Ikea chooses to sell clip-on bolt heads that simplify that, although no plans exist for that. For now, Ikea will first show Delaktig in April, at the Milan Furniture Fair, before releasing it into the wild next year. At which point, the hackers will have their say.Ikea biffed by going after IkeaHackers, the fan site that shares all kinds of new uses and smart mods for the Swedish superstore's affordable furniture—seriously, you can't buy this kind of devotion.
Until founder Jules Yap sets up shop under a new name, let's have a look at a few of the projects that make her site so endlessly scrollable. There's such a range of finished works—from "Oh oh I could do that!" to "Why would you do that?!" to "Hey now that gives me an idea..."—that it's tough not to fall into a DIY-design clickhole. Here are some of the adventures-in-how-to that stood out to us. Share your own personal faves below! There's no end to what you can to with an Expedit (RIP). This awesome hamster habitat won the Hack of the Year in 2010, and it's easy to see why: Some small modifications to the Expedit—plus a little glass—turned Ikea's beloved shelving system into a home for a furry friend. You'd never guess that this sleek, sinuous privacy screen—which turns the bathroom of an open loft into its own space—was made from $2 Rektangel vases. But yep: Hundreds of these glass thangs were tipped on their sides and repurposed. There's a reason this incredible personal library won the 2011 Hack of the Year.
It's made from 60—yes, 60—Billy bookshelves, Ikea's bargain basement bookshelf. Attached to the French country home of Chas Saunter, they look undeniably classy. Here's the archetypal example of IkeaHacking brilliance. Take one stool, four nested file organizers, and boom: A transformable table with tons of storage space for under $10. All you have to do is glue the folders together and attach them to the stool. For an added bonus, the nested folders inside the table pull out to change its profile. Things really get cool when an Ikea hacker has soldering skills: This brilliant hacker turned a plain old wood table top into a beautiful working guitar. Now this is unexpected. Tracing around an old kid's jacket will give a decent enough pattern for this cute little coat. Lined or unlined, it's pretty ingenious—though apparently it will dull the hell out of your sewing machine needle. I'm wondering whether to try to make one for myself... Here's a solution for all those space-challenged Ikea hackers out there (and aren't there so many!).
This Dutch hacker took a shelf and a cabinet and mounted them to the wall, creating what might be the skinniest desk for an iMac ever built. The best part might be the fact that there aren't any errant cables hanging around: They're all stored inside the upper cabinet. Okay, this is admittedly not for everyone, but it's a smart solution! An industrious family member made this for her grandma's home in Malacca, Malaysia, which is lacking upstairs plumbing. Adding a raised section to the top and a few privacy panels between the legs of a Stefan chair, a small bowl can easily slide in to the hole. Noted: next time she's choosing a model with arms, for extra comfort (though it would be tough to beat Homer's Lazy Man Toilet Seat for sheer sit-back-and-relax luxury). This was designed to allow or opening the drawers under a Mandal bed, but relocating two of the Frosta stool's legs looks like it would make a killer sofa table, too (as long as the height was right). There are a lot of storage beds on IkeaHackers, but there's something about the structure and staging of this one, which used nine Faktum cabinets, that makes it look particularly perfect for a small space.
It's involved (with extended blog post how-to here), but if you had the tools and the time and the drive—it would be incredible to make something this functional look this good. This is another project that's going to require some power tools, but if you're keen on sewing and have the room for a dedicated place to stitch, this is a might purdy use of an Ingo table. Additional tutorial here, if you're into it. Okay, hey—we're back to unconventional spots to pee and poo. The name here really says it all, and all it took was a long piece of MDF, a pair of Ikea PS Lockers, and a cat flap inserted into a custom cut-out in the side. Slide a litter box in the drawer and you're good to go.This effect was made pretty much exclusively out of Trofast toy storage boxes affixed to the walls and ceiling: some facing out and filled with magazines and books, some facing the other way and lit from within by LEDs. Ikea's iconic Frosta stool is a cult favorite—and here, it's turned into a beautifully abstract bookshelf that seems to climb up the wall like a vine.
Rather than spring for some spendy backsplash, this cool kitchen has a series of Rationell glass panels installed flush up against the wall between counter and cabinet. Wallpaper will make it match whatever else you've got going on, color-and-style-wise. Take an average Bjursta dining room table, two average plastic high chairs, do a little clever sawing, et voila: An incredible double-trouble high chair. Ikea hacking doesn't have to be all about furniture: This clever hacker took a plush stuffed animal from Ikea's kids section, decapitated it, and installed a hidden USB drive. It wasn't easy to figure out a design to encase the new tub in this remolded bathroom—but using two Ikea Pronomen countertops, the crew was able to perfectly fit the wood around the irregular space. Hyllis shelves are good for more than just books: This Texas hacker turned them into one of the craziest cat playgrounds I've ever seen. Hung from the ceiling with brackets, these ordinary shelves become an incredible jungle gym for this lucky kitty.