The Materialisation of Bauhaus in IKEA’s Democratic Design

Since 1995, when it was coined for Milan Design week by Lennart Ekmark, IKEA’s design director, Democratic Design has been disseminated assiduously. This new term catalysed the corporate mythology of the idyllic vision of ‘design for everyone’, which was created, professed and reiterated by the company.From the 1960s, while the concept seeds were discernible in the founder’s words until the 1990s when the homonymous publication was launched, Democratic Design has appeared ubiquitously in IKEA’s narrative. Over time, this expression has been associated with and embedded in a wide range of meanings, forms, images and concepts to gradually morph into a myth: a language of its own. As a myth has been created around IKEA’s concept of Democratic Design, the same can be said of the Bauhaus. Often identified as a symbol of modern architecture and design, the Bauhaus conceals a ‘large conglomerate of changing ideas’ behind its name and history (Kentgens-Craig 1998, 67). As Beatriz Colomina argues (2019), Bauhaus was never straightforward from the internal perversions, transgressive ideas and pedagogies to the distinct generations, school directors and educational programmes it encompassed. As an architecture and design school established in 1919 that is still influential in the 21st century, Bauhaus continues to have an impact on people’s lives and imaginations as far-reaching as that of IKEA. Both the Bauhaus and IKEA are myths of modernity, responsible for a radical change to our material and immaterial everyday life. But how does their revolution through design differ and intersect? What encompasses and distinguishes each actor’s democratization of design and urge to deliver design objects to a broader public? How have these two architectural agents actuated their visions of ‘design for everyone’? Whereas much has been written on Bauhaus, IKEA’s democratization of design has tended to be taken for granted, as a phenomenon we all absorb and live daily, though it is not considered a fully-fledged architecture research topic. This chapter unpacks the IKEA myth of Democratic Design, which, as the notion of democratic itself suggests, is controversial and, thus, requires closer attention. In conjunction with the Bauhaus premises, ideas, pedagogies and figures, it examines the origins, historical traces and various manifestations of IKEA’s mythical concept. It investigates how, by tapping into and appropriating a set of Swedish and Central European ideas, the furniture retailer has managed to make these materials in its Democratic Design and to apply them pragmatically to the market. In breaking down IKEA’s democratization of design and framing what it entails and conceals, the narrative centres around a neglected figure within historiographies of design and architecture: IKEA’s designer, Tomas Jelinek, the mediator between the furniture retailer and the renowned German school of design and, more broadly, between the global market and the wider modern movement.

ISBN:9781922601209

Jaar van publicatie:2022

Toegankelijkheid:Closed