Creative Mind + Ikea + Kool Furniture

It NEVER amazes me as to what a creative mind can do, especially with furniture. This is a great story I believe you will find very intresting.

Sure, every assembly procedure from Ikea is a bit of DIY, but apparently you can go a step further. This weekend I have occupied myself with Lack, Expedit and Lillberg (but that was for Mira's room and doesn't really count in this regard), assembling this with the following result:

Let me gloat a little bit more and add another picture to show my mighty Ikea-skills:

But that's not the entire reason why I'm posting this...
Why didn't anyone tell me there was a huge Ikea Hack community out there?

I've been coming up with unorthodox uses for Ikea furniture since I found my first student room in Ghent: just picking up the catalogue and browse and combine (based on the size of different objects) was enough (they had some handy cupboards that were great speaker stands if you combined them with a ...

My curiosity was picked by the Pimp My Billy concept, and after a really short Google tour I stumbled upon a semi-organised Ikea hack community:

Tons of ideas, some very simple and clean, others (admittedly) more of a far-fetched story.

I went looking for reactions from Ikea on the hacks, and could not come up with anything significant. Likewise, there is nothing to be found on their local site either. If I were them I'd be pretty supportive for this kind of thing. Sure, newly constructed objects might not adhere to the same safety standards, but acknowledging the fact that they exist does not necessarily mean that you take all the risk as a company (although you can never be sure in he US for example...).

On the other hand: this must be a fantastic source of inspiration for them. Take the dj console for example: it's a pretty simple object, required only a few extra holes and two lack pieces that need to be trimmed (sawed). The colour is the same, the size (width) is the same,... It would be a cinch for them to put it in production.

And what's more, the active nature of these communities allows them to monitor the popularity of different hacks. They should be organising contests like this one to see what they can get out of it.

In the end, it's a great accent for the strength of the concept: design which can be fit in everywhere and is affordable enough to let you experiment and customise. After all, you won't be so quick to saw your new Eames chair in two, would you?