Gallery: The Secret to Hacking Ikea Furniture Is More Ikea Furniture, Says Ikea
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Ikea's Delaktig sofa will go on sale in early 2018.
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The Delaktig bed, designed in collaboration with British designer Tom Dixon and seen in detail here for the first time, can convert into a sofa, a chaise, or even a luxurious dog bed. It's endlessly configurable—so long as you have stuff to reconfigure it with.
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Grooves in the aluminum frame allow for clip-on furniture additions, like side tables and privacy screens.
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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.
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Those add-ons will come from Ikea 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.
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Ikea creative director James 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 a Faraday cage.
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“We know that people want to make things different, to have their own identity,” Futcher says. 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.
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Delaktig formalizes that process, and brings much of it in-house.
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Consumers can expect to see new pieces that complement and convert the Delaktig in stores, but Ikea won't heavily promote them. The company says it's interested to see what shoppers do on their own.
