The Ikea Blog

The Vienna Furniture Museum presents The Ikea Phenomenon, an exhibition about Ikea, not by Ikea, that pays tribute to a phenomenon that has changed our lifestyles with mass produced designs in a way that nobody else has ever managed.

The exhibition shows Ikea furniture designs from the 1950s to the present and examples of international and Scandinavian design that served Ikea as inspiration.

Here are some interesting/curious facts I read on the press release:

IKEA was founded in 1943 by the then 17-year-old Ingvar Kamprad. To begin with he sold stationary, stockings and other everyday items, and only added furniture to his stock in 1948. The name IKEA is an acronym comprising the founder’s initials and the first letters of his father’s farm, Elmtaryd and his Swedish hometown, Agunnaryd. It was in the 1970s that the business began its transformation into one of the world’s largest furniture companies.

For IKEA, design is one of the central elements in the implementation of the idea of creating functional and well designed furniture that can be afforded by as many people as possible. This idea is based on such concepts as “Beauty for all” (Ellen Key 1899), concepts that date back to the 19th century reform movements and that are still manifest today in the “Swedish Model” of a modern society that focuses on family and social well-being.

Find more about the exhibition here.

Via Cool Hunting