The Delaktig sofa will be all about the add-onsTom 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.Last fall we bought an IKEA Ektorp sofa. At $399, it was a steal. If you’re unfamiliar with this classic IKEA sofa, here’s what you need to know: you buy your sofa base and choose your own slipcover from a dozen or so options. I had planned to get beige slipcovers, but they were sold out.
Since we live 120 miles from IKEA, popping in a few days later to pick one up wasn’t an option. So we went with white. Before you tell me I’m crazy (four kids and a dog!) let me explain: I’d done my due diligence. I’d read many blog posts (like here, here, and here) from busy moms who love their white Ektorp sofas, and who swore they’re not hard to maintain. If you read those posts (and the other Ektorp reviews online), you’ll notice a common thread: the people who love their white couches wash their slipcovers all. (Typical recommendations are to wash weekly or every other week.) We’ve now had our Ektorp sofa for four months. The maintenance routine looks like this: I strip the slipcovers from the base and the couch’s six cushions. I wash them in two separate loads (even though I have a front-loader, it’s a bit much for one load). I dry each load separately to 60 % or so and s-t-r-e-t-c-h the covers back onto the frame and cushions. (I hate that last part.)
The whole drill takes about 30 minutes of active time, which isn’t a lot. But it’s not time well spent when I’m actively trying to decrease my time spent on home management. The sofa looks best when I wash the slipcovers every week, but I don’t wash weekly unless we’re having guests or somebody spills something. It looks pretty good with every other week, and I can stretch it to three if I need to. But that’s still way more time than I want to spend maintaining a couch. I have found a few things that make the maintenance a bit easier:My mom gifted me my first bottle of this nontoxic instant stain remover, and it’s amazing. When I spilled red wine (sad but true) on the arm of the sofa, the Folex made it disappear. (My kids have rules about where they can and cannot have snack, yet I’m the one always spilling wine and coffee everywhere. Anne may mean “graceful” but it doesn’t always fit.)This product relies on grapefruit seed and orange extract for cleaning power, and I love its fresh, subtle smell.
My favorite part of washing the slipcovers is the way the whole living room smells when they’re newly cleaned. We use Biokleen because my girls and I have sensitive skin, but the important thing is to choose a detergent you really like the smell of–because the smell will permeate the whole room on that first day.I use this in every load to brighten and whiten. Similar to OxiClean but I prefer this brand.No, it’s not gentle, but I bleach the slipcovers every 3 washes or so to get rid of the dinginess that comes with having 4 kids and a dog (and a mom who sloshes her coffee). I like my sofa. I love the look of the white. And I know I can buy new slipcovers or dye the ones I have or cover the couch with blankets to protect it. But what I really want is to not be high-maintenance about my furniture. My sofa may have been cheap, but I can’t believe how much it’s costing me. This thing should have come with a maid. IKEA furniture: tell us all about yours in comments.