Published on November 12th, 2009 | This has got to be the first Mercedes Benz inspired hack. Nico Mertens adds seatheating to the Poang. Now, a hack you can really warm up to. “I have pimped my Ikea Poang with heated seating and extended the headrest to suit my purposes. The idea was born when I had a discussion with my friends about leather sofas and I found out that most girls really do like leather sofas but they didn’t like the feel of cold leather. Every damn Mercedes car has seatheating installed, why does nobody include seatheatings in leather chairs or sofas? My idea was born! It took me about 3 days of research and planning. After those 3 days I started to order the necessary material which was quite hard to get. Necessary items:- Ikea Poäng + Ikea Poäng stool- Another cushion for Ikea Stool to make straps and a bag for electrics- Seatheating deluxe edition- Powerful notebook adapter to deliver 12 to 13,5 Volts and up to 7 Ampere. (Please go for a good one.
You don’t wanna burn down the house. I had a bad experience with cheap stuff)- Little box for electrics- Shaped Wood to extend the upper end of Poäng for a higher head rest.- Wood to build a side controller for the seatheating - Sewing machine- Leather needle- Thread in colour of the leather- Paint- Sandpaper 80 and 200 (rough and fine stuff) The good old head-cushion got some extra two straps made out of another leather seat cushion for a stool and some weights were put in the end of those straps. The part of the cushion with the zip will be needed later… Reason is simple: I wanted to be able to adjust the head-cushion so everyone who sits on it is comfortable. For the same reason I asked a friend of mine to form up some wooden parts which I placed at the former end of the Poäng. I added another few nicely shaped pieces of wood on the side. Those parts got drilled and screwed on the chair. Then the whole chair got treated with sandpaper and was repainted. Then I spoke to somebody who was able to sew me a bag out the rest of the seat cushion from the stool.
It was added to the Poäng seat and that is where all the electrics go in. It’s nice to know that if you do move houses you can still place it in the middle of a room with no annoying cables. Also useful when you want to clean up or in summer when it’s hot and a seatheating is possibly not necessary. Everyone said I am freak but now since my girlfriend’s grandma sat in my pimped Ikea Poäng she spread the word and many people want one… Meanwhile I was offered an astonishing 1000,00€ from a wine consultant for that chair.”With its bentwood frame, cantilevered seat, and curved backrest, the Poäng chair is one of Ikea's most recognizable pieces. The Swedish furniture maker has produced over 30 million Poäng chairs since it debuted in 1976, and it continues to sell about 1.5 million every year—the company's bestselling armchair—not bad for a design that's settling squarely into middle age. So what, exactly, made the Poäng a commercial success and an instant icon for Ikea?
The secret lies in a genius concept that's been gently updated with the times. The company doesn't normally put individual designers in the spotlight, but for the Poäng's 40th birthday, it did. Japanese designer Noboru Nakamura is the creator of the Poäng. He came to Ikea in 1973 to learn more about Scandinavian furniture—and there, he collaborated with Lars Engman, the director of design at the company, on a chair that would use plywood veneer construction. In a video interview, Nakamura, who left Ikea in 1978 to start his own furniture company, describes how the chair came about. "I learned by experience that a cantilever consisting of a U-shaped structure could, with a person, swing to some extent with the use of molded plywood, and I wanted it to swing in an elegant way, which triggered me to imagine Poäng," he says. "A chair shouldn't be a tool that binds and holds the sitter; it should be a tool that provides us emotional richness. [Poäng] creates an image where we let off stress or frustration by swinging.
Such movement has meaning and value." The final silhouette resembled Alvar Aalto's Model 406 chair of 1939, but in lieu of a webbed or caned seat, the Poäng sported thin upholstery. "While the design has remained largely unchanged since its inception, this iconic product has undergone some alterations to make it more accessible, more affordable, more relevant, and to increase the quality," says Mark Bond, deputy range manager of living rooms at Ikea. There have been tweaks to the upholstery color and pattern to keep the chair relevant with consumer tastes, but the biggest change happened in 1992. The chair's seat was originally made from tubular steel, but in the early '90s, the company switched to an all-wood frame and also narrowed the size. This allowed the chair to be flat packed—a move that reduced the price by 21% for customers (it's actually less expensive now than it was when it launched). That same year, Ikea changed the chair's original name, Poem, to Poäng.
"The evolution has always been design-focused, thinking of this product not as a fashion item but rather adhering to and improving upon the classic design," Bond says. Considering that the Poäng routinely shows up in houses, apartments, dorm rooms, and anywhere you need to kick up your feet, Nakamura's emphasis on an emotionally rich chair—and Ikea's affordability-minded engineering—have proven to be a winning combination. To honor the design, the company is selling a limited-edition version of the chair, with a grasscloth-like cushion cover much like the inaugural offering had in 1976, starting in September. Like the recently opened Ikea museum, that fanfare around the Poäng's design shows how the furniture company is beginning to demystify some of the genius that's contributed to its history—a welcome change that gives some of the most ubiquitous products in the world the same pedigree as pieces that cost many hundreds of dollars more. Never miss a story. I'd also like to receive special Fast Company offers