Home Furnishing Remix: Hack-Your-IKEA Contest

Taking the build-it-yourself nature of IKEA even further, experimental design collaborative Platform 21 ran a Hack-your-IKEA contest this summer. The Amsterdam based group received close to a hundred entries from around the world that used IKEA products as raw materials to build custom home furnishing remixes.

The furniture hackers created a wide assortment of items ranging from practical hybrids to conceptual artworks. In the end (and in the spirit of hacking), the judges named two winners. As one judge put it: “That is the advantage of a hacking contest; that you can change the rules yourself at the last minute.”  Pictured above is the ASTRID hack by Lisette van Haasnoot.

Lisette explains the process:

“You buy an ASTRID at IKEA and pay at the cash register. Then you take the lamp out of its box and return the lamp without box at the customer service desk to get your money back. Now you have a free (!!) and very pretty – not yet functioning – lamp.
To make it into a functioning lamp you need two cardboard partitions (which you also get at IKEA for free), which you crosswise slide into each other.
In the middle of this partition you cut a space in which to fit a light bulb and socket. You also cut parts of the box out according to the required light intensity. After that it is just a case of putting the different parts together.”

bustler: “Hack-your-IKEA Contest Shows some Love to Generic IKEA Products”

[via Archinect]