It takes a lot of energy to keep the lights on as you greedily pile ¢59 kitchen dongles and weird cookies into that blue bag, which is why Ikea is making a push to offset its total energy consumption by 2020. This week, it took a big step towards doing so by buying a wind farm in Illinois.
Ikea is already the gold standard for furniture that moves well, but this year its designers are pushing the art of nomadism even further. Images of Ikea’s new PS collection have arrived, and its name—On the Move—says it all.
They’re the perfect accent to a well-manicured backyard, but the solar-powered lights dotting your gardens and walkways are just one misstep away from being accidentally destroyed. So Ikea’s come up with the perfect solution, LED lights that you press into your lawn so that they’re flush to the ground while still providing plenty of light.
Let’s be honest with ourselves here for a moment. If you’re heading to Ikea to furnish your home, you probably don’t live in a sprawling million dollar mansion. Instead, you’re probably furnishing a tiny dorm room or a cozy apartment. And not only is Ikea aware of this, it’s also taken it to heart with a tiny billboard that still manages to maximize ad space with three different messages.
Expedit, we hardly knew ye. Ikea recently announced that the popular shelving system is not long for this world, and the internet responded with rage. But there’s a really good reason for Ikea to get rid of Expedit. And in fact, it’s not really going away at all.
This is hilarious. Imagine shopping inside IKEA and hopping inside one of those strategically decorated rooms where every single thing has a price tag and playing with the faucet and looking at all the weird Swedish names and then… realizing you have no idea how to get out. That’s because you’ve just been pranked. There’s no way out anymore. The original entrance has been replaced with a room that just boxes you in. Genius.
Space is beautiful. Space is terrifying. IKEA is mostly just terrifying, especially when you get lost. Director Daniel Hubbard hilariously spoofed Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity by setting it inside the expansive world of IKEA. At over 346,000 square feet and absolutely no sense of direction, it sure feels endless. The parody trailer nails the IKEA shopping experience, the frantic cries of Sandra Bullock, and the overall tension of Gravity. IKEA is Earth’s equivalent of getting lost in space.
I’ve always daydreamed about what working at IKEA must be like: Creating whimsical reindeer-shaped furniture, testing new meatball recipes, and dreaming up adorable product names. But as the Wall Street Journal reveals today, the process of developing products at the world’s largest furniture retailer is an epic, efficiency-driven numbers game.
Ikea furniture names are often full of umlauts and improbable double consonants. I’ve been told that the names are Swedish—and I have no choice but to believe this, because I don’t speak Swedish. Come to think of it, they sort of resemble the names of another fantastical Scandinavian export: Death Metal.
Though they’ve made clear that the decision to sell solar panels to the masses on a market-by-market basis, the results are already clear: IKEA is aiming to make solar energy mainstream. If there’s one company that can take this green push to the market in a way that’s not-quite-cheap but certainly not overpriced, it’s IKEA. […]