After more than a week spent mostly in bed with a flu, I finally felt well enough to venture into the world to buy a present for my kid. I ended up at Ikea. Man, what an experience!
I love the place. It's so bright and inviting, and full of ideas. An awful lot of them are bad ideas, but you forgive that because every once in a while you stumble on something that's a brilliant rethinking of something you thought couldn't be improved.
But like I said, it's not all good. Some of the kids rooms (above) bordered on child abuse. How do you like those High Kitsch flat-colored cabinets or the deliberately generic design of the ladybug? Why is the yellow stool so dorky?
On the other hand, you gotta love these bunk beds. Kids like stuff like that!
What do you think of this work space (above)? It's so tiny! Surely big ideas require big writing surfaces. Ikea does make beautiful, sturdy wooden desks but they're called dinner tables. I have lots of ideas for desk designs. Maybe I'll do a blog about them sometime.
Boy, Ikea sure is good at cheery! It's hard not to smile when you see a room like this, even if you'd go nuts if you had to live in it. This is the kind of place Stimpy would design for Ren, the kind of place that would provoke a curmudgeon into homicidal rage.
I think here in America we're shielded from the weirdest stuff (above). It would be great to go to Sweden and see what's for sale in the Ikeas there.
I think the native Swedish Ikea is chock full of promotions for their prefab houses and office buildings, and for plans for office interiors. Come to think of it, I think Ikea designs whole communities. Fascinating! Disney might have gone this route if he'd lived longer.
BTW: I haven't forgotten the Beatnik stuff. I'm working on it now, and it's a ton of fun. I was just too spaced out to do it earlier in the week!