RUGGED
Designing objects by hacking IKEA
A N A N YA J A L A L I Photo by: Kaboompics.com
“I’m not one to just decoupage a table top and call it a day.”
Contents I N T R O D U C T IO N M Y
M A N I F E S T O
D ES I G N
AR C HI V E S EC OL O T HE
R E P UR PO S I N G
HA C K
FA B RIC S
S US TAI N A B I L IT Y WH Y
D O
P E O PLE
R EPU R PO SE R E PA IR
EVERY D AY M AT ER I A LS
D E SIGN
R EQ U I R E D
I N S T R U C T I O N S F I N A L
O U T C O M E
Photo by: Thor Alvis
Introduction Good design is innovative, sustainable, creative and should have the ability to be re-appropriated and reused by users in any context. Traces of these ideologies are ingrained in me as a designer largely due to my Indian background and have become a part of my manifesto. This catelogue looks into everyday design and how it acts as a foundation for other aspects of design such as sustainability, innovation, function and creativity through the hacking of IKEA products.
My Manifesto
My Design Manifesto is built on five basic principles of design. My designs are sustainable, innovative, functional, practical,and have an overall organic and rugged aesthetic. These ideologies act as the foundational principles that form the basis of my chosen IKEA hack.
Design Archives
A visit to the RMIT design archives gave me insight on the DIY culture that began in the 1950’s. The archives held hand drawn blue prints of ‘Do-It-Yourself’ furniture by Frederick Ward. Magazines from the 20th century displayed: how to design your own backyard, DIY furniture ideas, patterned fabrics and décor within the household, to name a few. The magazines also related outdoor DIY with men, and indoor DIY (largely with regards to household décor) with women. They showcased the use of fabrics within the household for various DIY projects, and this gave me inspiration to base my final IKEA hack around the use of textiles/fabrics from IKEA, as you will see in further sections of this catelogue.
Ecolo F L O W E R VA S E
One of the first activities I undertook during the research for ‘Everyday design - hacking IKEA’ was the transformation of an empty detergent bottle into a flower vase. It was an interesting starting point for my research and enabled me to critique design snobbishness and appreciate the beauty in everyday things. The activity was done gaining inspiration from Enzo Mari’s ‘ECOLO’ which was in collaboration with Alessi.
The developmental stage of the IKEA hack.
The hack The IKEA product I hacked involves the use of different fabrics from an IKEA store to create a bedside bag. A bag that hangs over your bed frame for storage of items hence replacing your average bedside table. The idea behind this hack is one of reusing and repurposing items (in this case - fabrics) easily found within the household This is quite a common concept in the average Indian household.
Repurposing fabrics
An example of this lies in what I call the life cycle of a t-shirt. It starts with buying and wearing a regular t-shirt outdoors where its visible to the general public. But as it starts to wear out and isn’t good enough to wear outside, one starts wearing it indoors only and then to bed as nightwear. Once it isn’t good to wear at all, or you’ve merely just outgrown it – it ends up being worn on Holi (an Indian festival that involves applying powdered colours on one another which leads to clothes getting soiled). But since you can wear only one pair of clothes a year during Holi, one often ends up tearing the fabric apart to use it as replacement for a dusting cloth. A great way to prolong the life of the fabric and give rise to a more sustainable cycle, different from the unsustainable direct disposal of the t shirt. The renewal and reuse principle shown here, demonstrates the role of creativity over consumption in the identity of the everyday designer.
Photos by: Unsplash. com and pexels.com
Sustainability
T H R O U G H R E P U R P O S I N G A N D R E - A P P R O P R I AT I O N
Sustainability is an important attribute of everyday design as it prolongs the life of objects in one way or another. If an object is repaired or reappropriated for another purpose instead of being disposed off or replaced with another object, its life prolongs and waste generation is reduced – as seen in the idea of repurposing fabrics – the basis for my IKEA hack. This lies in direct contrast with the patterns of consumption and disposal often seen with user- identities. Therefore sustainability can be seen as a byproduct of the actions involved in everyday designing.
The sustainable identity relies on design actions and interventions that allow for the reshaping of the world around us. It rests on the ability to appropriate and adapt artefacts as design resources that lead to the promotion of renewal and reuse. For example, despite the marketing of inexpensive and disposable solutions by IKEA, IKEA hackers have pushed beyond the Do-It-Yourself culture that the company invites in order to re-appropriate and renew IKEA products to adapt to their unique and changing needs (Wakkary, 2019).
Repurposing saris [a women’s garment from South Asia especially in modern day India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal) that consists of a drape varying from 4.5 metres to 8 metres in length and 60 cm to 1.20 m in breadth . It is typically wrapped around the waist, with one end draped over the shoulder, baring the midriff.] fabrics to make sofa covers. Photo by: ladyselection.com
Photo by: Archldees
A ladder repurposed to make a bookshelf.
It is at this moment that their real functions, meanings and structures take shape, and we realise that they are real things, different to the ideal objects we see in the catalogue and showroom. For example, in my IKEA hack a floor rug and a few table mats are used - not for their intended purpose, but are stitched together to make a bedside storage bag; something the designer of these products wouldn’t have thought of.
Photos by: www.boredpanda.com
Why do people repurpose?
Books repurposed to make shelves.
The reason people reappropriate objects and use them in a way that’s not the object’s intended use, is because people’s needs may not always match the assumptions of designers. The design objects that we find in a marketplace are somehow sterile and unfinished and are only completed and alive when they are appropriated by users and adapted to the context of their everyday lives.
A broken bag strap repaired by tying up both ends together.
A broken climbing rope repurposed by weaving a mat out of it. Photos: Understanding repair as a creative process of everyday design.
Repair
A S A W AY T O R E P U R P O S E I T E M S M A D E O F F A B R I C S
Everyone is a designer and design is an ongoing activity that includes the repair, modification, and appropriation of design objects and systems. Repairing of objects often occurs within the household and can be seen as a creative process exclusively. A study conducted within various families researches the repairability of objects within the household. It concludes that mechanical objects are found to be more “repairable� than digital objects, merely due to lack of knowledge among people about the technical aspects of the latter (Wakkary & Maestri, 2019). The example given further throws light on the ease of repairability of mechanical items; in this case - items made of fabrics.
Photos: Instagram - sodbury sewing
An IKEA design precedent During my research phase for this project I came across this handbag that was created out of Ikea bought table mats. It acted as a design precedent in my research as it showcased the reusability of everyday fabrics easily found in any household.
Photo by: pixabay
A young child using a cupboard shelf as a step stool. Photo from: “The resourcefulness of everyday design.�
Everyday design THE GENERAL CONCEPT
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A research article I came across studied three families with young children and looked deeply into each household, observing minor intricacies such as chairs being used as temporary garden tables, the alternate use of half-height walls, a cupboard shelf being used as a step stool, proving the existence of an 'everyday designer' in every family member. Such redesigns are typically expedient and quite temporary; however they can also be adapted to form the centre of routines, and can be combined to create long-term systems (Wakkary, 2019). This process can also be referred to as design without designers.
Materials required FOR MAKING THE BEDSIDE BAG
A roll of cotton thread - thick enough for a sturdy sticth through a rug.
A sturdy and thick rug from IKEA. I’ve used the IKEA TANUM rug.
About 2 MARIT blue table mats from any IKEA store.
A large pair of scossors for - preferably ones that are ideal for cutting fabrics.
Two thick needles that can easily pierce through a thick rug.
Ultimately, my IKEA hack is a combination of differently textured fabrics put together to make an entirely new and repurposed storage bag. It uses the following two products, easily available at any IKEA store, and at an extremely low pricing! An IKEA TANUM rug, and two blue MARIT table mats, each priced at AUD 7.99 and AUD 1.99.
Other materials required for the hack are a sewing needle, cotton thread (both thick enough to sew through the rug), and a pair of large scissors.
Instructions HOW TO MAKE IT
Start by measuring the size of the pockets that you want on your bedside bag (on the table mats) and mark it using a pencil and ruler. Cut the fabric using a pair of scissors to appropriate sizes. The entire size of that mat is ideal for the main pocket, and a quarter of the mat can be used for smaller pockets (1). Fold the edges of the fabrics that have been cut and glue them with some PVA adhesive or stitch them in, so as to prevent the rest of the fabric from tearing out (2)
Thread the needle and cut the thread at an appropriate length (3&4).
Pierce the threaded needle through both fabrics after placing the mat on the lower half of the rug (5).
Pierce the needle back through the fabrics and continue the stitching process (6).
Stitch along three sides of the pocket - leaving one side (on the top) open (7).
After stitching along three sides, tie a knot on the underside of the rug - to fasten the stitch (8).
While stitching, make small folds in the fabric and stitch over those folds - this will give the pocket more volume (9).
After stitching all the pockets on, your bedside beg is ready [10]. Use the other half of the rug to tuck under the mattress of your bed.
The bedside bag THE FINAL OUTCOME
The Bedside Bag hangs over one’s bedside and contains different pockets for the storage of different items often found on a bedside table, namely- a phone/ headphones, book, spectacles, medicines, wallet, your bed linen, or even a water bottle. It can store any sort of knick-knack one would want to keep at their bedside table, without occupying the space that an average bedside table would! Finally, the concept of this bag is built on the frameworks of everyday design and throws light on reusability of objects to bring about sustainable use of everyday items through innovation, significant function and creativity – all principles that inform who I am as a designer and that will continue to be the essence of my future design practice.
Reference List: Wakkary, R., & Maestri, L. (2007, June). The resourcefulness of everyday design. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition (pp. 163-172). ACM. Maestri, L., & Wakkary, R. (2011, November). Understanding repair as a creative process of everyday design. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM conference on Creativity and cognition (pp. 81-90). ACM. Wakkary, R., & Tanenbaum, K. (2009, April). A sustainable identity: the creativity of an everyday designer. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 365-374). ACM. Desjardins, A., & Wakkary, R. (2013, June). Manifestations of everyday design: guiding goals and motivations. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Creativity & Cognition (pp. 253-262). ACM. Rosner, D., & Bean, J. (2009, April). Learning from IKEA hacking: I’m not one to decoupage a tabletop and call it a day. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 419-422). ACM.