UTS and IKEA will research how contemporary design can create more meaningful and sustainable ways of domestic living in Australia. The collaboration is the first of its kind for IKEA Australia.
Jan Gardberg, Country Manager of IKEA Australia and Professor Thea Brejzek at the launch of the IKEA x UTS Future Living Lab. Photo: Dang Khoa Nguyen
A new collaboration between UTS and IKEA will provide a local design hub for thought leaders, aspiring young designers and the community to innovate together to create a better everyday life through thoughtful design.
Located at the UTS campus in Ultimo, Sydney, the IKEA x UTS Future Living Lab will push the boundaries of innovation, research and experimentation to develop new design approaches and smart technologies for the unique needs of Australian life at home.
The lab will bring together IKEA expertise with academics and students from the UTS Interior Architecture and Product Design programs as well as designers, design organisations and the community to generate new ideas to produce prototypes, exhibitions and events.
The lab's research on the nature of Australian domestic spaces will give IKEA a unique insight into the specific conditions that exist within the Australian context. In turn, UTS design students will work with some outstanding designers from IKEA to transform future living concepts and ecosystems into the way we will live tomorrow. Through this dialogue, the lab will investigate the future of Australian living spaces spatially, atmospherically and digitally.
Students Sophia Hamilton and Dominic Harrison with Professor Lawrence Wallen at the launch of the IKEA x UTS Future Living Lab. Photo: Dang Khoa Nguyen
Jan Gardberg, Country Manager, IKEA Australia, said: “As a company, we are firm believers that great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone and that collaboration is the best tool to drive innovation on a global scale.
“We are excited to be working with UTS, the leading Design school in NSW, to see how young Australians approach design today. With the IKEA x UTS Future Living Lab we want to channel the next generation of designers to explore the issues that are changing the industry and Australian living, whether it’s sensory design, sustainability, personalisation, smart technologies and more.”
“We already do a lot to improve the lives of many people, and alongside UTS we hope to take this vision even further. It’s about exploring new ways to enable a better and more sustainable life for Australians.”
Research interns Dominic Harrison and Emilia Lin in the IKEA x UTS Future Living Lab. Photo: Dang Khoa Nguyen
The emphasis IKEA puts on sustainability and their understanding of how we live with technology very much aligns with our aims, expertise and interests at UTS. That includes the IKEA ambition to be a restorative and regenerative ‘circular economy’ business.
Thea Brejzek
Professor for Spatial Theory at UTS
“In particular, this exciting collaboration allows us to develop and test the futuring of integrated design approaches between interior architecture and product design that are concerned with the future of living in a rapidly changing Australian urban environment,” she said.
IKEA and UTS share a natural curiosity and desire to find solutions to meet the changing demands in the homes of today and tomorrow.
The collaboration will also provide practical experience for the next generation of Australian designers. As part of the program’s inaugural year, the students will have the opportunity to travel to the global IKEA HQ in Älmhult, Sweden, and gain firsthand experience and understanding of the business and production processes, from design conception to the retail floor.
The launch of the innovation lab follows previous successful collaborations between IKEA and the UTS School of Design. In recent projects, UTS students were invited to bring an Australian perspective to renowned British designer Tom Dixon’s ‘open platform’ DELAKTIG range, while a second student workshop explored how to improve the living room through the senses and ‘invisible design’.
Merena Nguyen: So the workshop is working with a modular sofa made by Tom Dixon, and the proposal from IKEA is for us to really take the sofa, and see what we can do with it, and be creative with it.
Tom Fereday: The piece has been designed as an open source product so that the product can be customized and developed into an infinite number of variations.
Angus Easthope: We started to have a look at the different provocations that were given to us by IKEA, and we focused on the myth of minimalism.
Laura Touman: We wanted to actually challenge this notion, this idea that minimalism means storing all your objects away, hidden from out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. We wanted to encourage people to use their objects to tell a story, a narrative about their life.
Sari Tredinnick: The idea that me and my partner have come up with is basically a couch that remembers the user specifically, and so it's similar to a mood ring or a Hypercolor T-shirt. How you sit in it, and then it kind of molds to your body, and that it remembers your marks.
Christine Gough: So they're taking their ideas, and they're really expanding on them, going way, way, way out there, thinking about different materials, and different concepts and ideas. Sometimes, we at IKEA, we can get locked into our own ideas. We need to collaborate. We need to work with different groups of people, and it's so exciting to work with these young design minds. They have the most amazing ideas, you know? They're in this time at the moment of looking at ideas, researching.
Laura Touman: It's really empowering to be taken so seriously, I think as a student designer, by a company like IKEA. They're actually ready to listen, to answer our questions, to give us advice, and it just really shows that they do trust us as the next generation of designers.
Merena Nguyen: You wouldn't really get the opportunity outside of uni to work with an international designer like Tom Dixon and the global company, IKEA. Like, it's a very cool experience.