IKEA

CAN IT BE GREAT DESIGN?

I think a question Nicholas Oddy raised was very interesting. Is the IKEA BILLY bookcase good design? He talked about how IKEA sometimes puts the names of the designers beside products, as though you are supposed to know who they are. I’m not sure if I just took this the wrong way, but this seems like an unfair point to make. Does something have to be made by a famous designer to qualify as great design? So, I thought I’d have a look at a few of IKEA’s most popular products. There must be something well designed about them if they are sold in their millions.

So, lets start with the true best seller, the Poäng Armchair. Google tells me this has sold an insane 30 million units since it released in 1976. It’s probably one of the most common chairs of all time and probably the first product you would think of when you hear IKEA. I’ve even got one, and I love it. Cheap, comfortable, and customisable. What more do you need? It comes in a range of wood finishes with a variety of couch cushion options on top. While it is the same design as people across the world might have, you can make it your own in some small way choosing the colour combinations to suit your space.

Poäng, 1977

The Poäng chair was first released in 1977, designed by Noboru Nakamura. It took inspiration from Scandinavian design which he adopted during his time studying in Sweden. I look at this chair and think about how modern and current it looks and it is impressive it was released over 40 years ago.

Noboru Nakamura

IKEA 1977 Catalogue

The chair is made from a flowing bent plywood veneer construction, with a cantilever seat. It was designed with the idea of helping you to relax at home. The cantilever design with flexible ash was intended to allow the user to swing and help de-stress, like how traditional rocking chairs work.

“Noboru set out to design an emotionally rich chair that could swing in an elegant way and provide meaning and value by enabling people to let off stress or frustration by swinging.” - IKEA Spokesperson

If you sit in this chair that is exactly what it does. It’s a really comfortable armchair with the perfect amount of give in the seat. You can swing like you can in a rocking chair without worrying about moving too much or falling backwards. I think its popularity almost hurts its image unfortunately. People might not consider it ‘great’ because it’s simply so mainstream. If you wanted to kit a house out on the cheap, you would probably chuck in one of these chairs. But that doesn’t make it bad. If you compare it to some of the Eames Chairs for Herman Miller, they were technically designed with the same mindset. Modern chairs designed for modern mass manufacturing. The Eames chair just increased in price and became more difficult to obtain whereas the IKEA offerings stayed much the same. I’m not arguing this is the same as any of Eames designs by any means. There’s something to say for rarity and availability of a product influencing how it is perceived. If everyone could buy an Eames chair for £70 would it still be as popular as it is today. The company that manufactures a design shouldn’t necessarily take away from the design in every case.

So, is the Poäng great design? I would say yes. While not the first bent plywood or cantilever chair by any means, they got the concept pretty spot on. Perfecting the design for mass production, the intended purpose. Maybe not a household name to most but Nakamura created arguably the most successful chair of the modern day. Overlooked perhaps because of the very brand that helped it become so popular.

Obviously, it’s not all great. IKEA has some good designs, but it also has some very poor ones. Mainly its cheap and tacky looking MDF constructions. The BILLY Bookcase would be a good example, the very item that made me think about all this. It’s quite literally nothing special. A simple modern bookcase offered in a range of sizes. While I think the Poäng is a well-designed chair that can stick around, this product is almost designed to be replaced.

Original BILLY, 1979

Current Billy

Variations with Attachments

Designed by Gillis Lundgren, the bookcase was made with simplicity in mind with an aim of being timeless and able to conform to the user’s needs as time evolved. To fit different size requirements and situations. The BILLY was clearly successful at this application, its simplicity can make it fit into any scenario. It is what you make of it, and not much more. It hasn’t fallen out of fashion, only increasing in popularity even. My problem isn’t with the design. It is with the material choice. The choice of cardboard MDF is arguably the worst aspect of anything from IKEA. This will hardly be an heirloom that can be passed down to anyone like bookcases might have been 100 years ago. This material is cheap and flimsy. So much so that the original BILLY was wider at 90cm, but this was changed to 80cm in 1988 following complaints that the shelves bent under the weight of the books. So, the very first iteration showed the issues with this material choice, failing at its sole use. It allows it to be priced so low that it’s so easily replaceable without a second thought, so it almost doesn’t matter that it’s not sturdy.

While it might stay in fashion for 50 years the material choice almost makes it impossible to last that long. I can’t imagine many original BILLY bookcases from the 80s are still knocking about these days. I think it also just looks cheap, unlike the Poäng. I am not a fan of the shiny veneer finish, not to mention the holes that are still visible on the furniture when it is put together. The ease of construction sometimes has its negatives drawbacks, but I guess for the price you can’t really complain.

Completely lacking character, I would say the BILLY bookcase isn’t great design. Purely designed to be cheap and mass produced with not much else in mind. A capitalistic nightmare that sums up the worst of IKEA. Recycling schemes from the company try to make up for this clear issue in their philosophy but I think it’s too little too late. It suffers the same fate as their third most popular product, the LACK table released in the very same year as the BILLY. Think of how many LACK tables you’ve seen over the years with a wonky leg that looks like it’s ready for the bin. Unlike the Poäng, these products aren’t designed to last and that makes them poor design in my eyes. They hit a few positive marks, timeless and stylish, but fail on the most important. What does it matter if something is nice if it needs chucked in a few years?

LACK Tables

I mean my bed is also from IKEA, made from cheap veneer covered MDF. Is it a particularly well-designed bed? No. Is it a good bed for the price? Yes. So, in that aspect it is well designed. They’ve made it so difficult to choose anything else because of the price. My bed hasn’t fallen apart yet so that’s a good sign, but I doubt its something I’ll keep around for my entire life. Not everyone can afford fancy designer items. In an ideal world we’d all be able to afford well designed furniture that can last a lifetime but it isn’t that simple. IKEA gives you these possibilities on a budget and I think that’s a good thing in a way. Obviously, there’s something unethical about shifting millions of units of furniture every year, but people do need furniture. Looking past the moral dilemmas it’s clear to see they have achieved something amazing in terms of modernising the furniture industry.