ikea

very interesting article on IKEA and the philosophies behind the stores.

Flatpack meant making things so cheap, in fact, that furniture, instead of accumulating emotional weight as it was passed down the generations, would come to seem transient and disposable - and that one recent soggy Saturday, in a seethingly crowded branch of Ikea at Brent Park, north London, a young couple would gaze at a Lack sidetable, and then, with fond exasperation, at each other, and have the following conversation:

"But it's only £8."

"But we don't need it."

"But it's only £8!"

"But we don't ... OK. Whatever. Whatever."

and some interesting criticisms:

The Ikea path to self-fulfilment is not, really, a matter of choice. "They have subtle techniques for encouraging compliance," argues Joe Kerr, head of the department of critical and historical studies at the Royal College of Art. "And in following them you become evangelists for Ikea. If you look at [police] interrogation techniques, for example, you see that one of the ways you break somebody's will is to get them to speak in your language. Once you've gone to a shop and asked for an Egg McMuffin, or a skinny grande latte, or a piece of Ikea furniture with a ludicrous name, you're putty in their hands." Kerr is one of a strident battalion of Ikea critics for whom our compliance with the company's aesthetic is a uniformly bad thing. "People say, well, surely they've raised the standard of design in dull British homes," he says. "But I think they've reduced acceptable standards at the other end. People who might have been slightly more ambitious or critical about their furniture end up accepting something that looks half-modern and OK ... It may be better than the worst, but it's worse than the best."

more info:
Ikea: the facts
Ikea: the history
Ikea: the philosophy