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Courier-Mail
14-06-2025
- Business
- Courier-Mail
Inside IKEA's top secret product lab in Sweden, where new items are dreamt up
Don't miss out on the headlines from Interiors. Followed categories will be added to My News. Each of home furnishing giant IKEA's 12,000 products has passed through a fairly typical-looking three-storey office block in a tiny town in Sweden's south. The top secret product development laboratory is where an army of engineers and designers comes up with a host of new future concepts, from beds, couches and tables to lamps, speakers and air purifiers. 'Magic happens here,' Fredrika Inger, managing director of IKEA of Sweden, declares. Inger has just welcomed a small and carefully vetted group of international journalists to the lab in Älmhult to receive a rare insight into how additions to the vast product range go from idea to reality. 'There are several designated zones where you may take pictures, but nowhere else,' she instructs. Security is tight, and for good reason. X SUBSCRIBER ONLY IKEA's whole-of-home philosophy means there are some incredible and out-of-the-box prototypes securely housed within these four walls. Every product that's developed must meet a strict criteria of five values – form, function, sustainability, quality, and low prices. 'The people who work here have a tough job,' Inger says. 'We have a minimum criteria – meeting those five goals – but then we see how we can stretch them. We call it democratic design.' The top-secret IKEA product design laboratory in Älmhult, a small town in Sweden's south where the world's first IKEA store opened in 1958. It's tempting to see these grand statements and passionately declared philosophies as typically hollow corporate speak. But IKEA has believed in these principles since it was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, a 17-year-old visionary who began with pens and wallets before eventually pioneering the concept of chic but affordable plat-packed furniture. Ingvar Kamprad created IKEA in the 1940s and built it into a global icon. The very first large format store, which current big box IKEAs around the world are still largely based on, remains standing in Älmhult and is now a sprawling museum. It houses originals of key pieces from each decade – defining products, sheets of fabric, a host of trinkets and curiosities, and technological innovations alike. From the very first range to now, the belief behind every single product is the same – create something that makes life easier or more pleasant. Or ideally, both. Frederika Inger welcoming journalists to the top-secret product development lab. 'The world we live in is a bit tough,' Inger says. 'There are many challenges and it's a bit scary. This a defining time in history and there's an opportunity for us to be a positive force and help people live well and stay on the right path.' IKEA's product designers don't just operate on gut instinct. Teams of researchers spend time in the field, embedded within the homes of regular people to observe how they live and what can be improved. In some cases, that need is confirmed by the experiences of the engineers themselves. David Wahl is a senior designer who spearheaded an emerging and burgeoning new category while working with IKEA in China. Being used to the clean and crisp environment of Scandinavia, Wahl became worried about air quality in congested and smoggy Shanghai. But he found his stock standard store-bought home air purifier ugly and uninspiring. 'I went to Beijing Road, the electronics district where you can buy just about anything,' he recalls. 'I had the idea of building my own air purifier that looked like a piece of furniture.' He bought a pretty basket and embedded the machinery inside it. It looked nice but 'wasn't necessarily the most effective purifier', he laughs. David Wahl's first prototype of a piece of furniture with an air purifier built inside. Over coming weeks, he continued tinkering with the design in his spare time, perfecting it until the piece was both robust, efficient and attractive. Realising he was onto something, Wahl thought about the mass market implications. Long story short, his initiative led to the creation of the Starkvind table with a built-in air purifier and smart home connectivity. David Wahl with a concept sketch of the table with built-in air purifier he invented. The Starkvind table with built-in air purifier is an example of innovative IKEA design. There's also an iteration of the product that allow it to be stood vertically at 90 degrees, almost doubling as a kind of art piece. Another growing product segment is sound – and well beyond a device to blare music from, product design developer Stjepan Begic explains. As IKEA hones in on its focus on sleep quality, with mattresses, pillows, doonas and textiles, it once again brings its whole-of-home focus by integrating lighting and sound into the equation. 'When it comes to sound in the bedroom, you normally only think about blockout noises, like white noise,' Begic says. 'But we think you can use sounds to create certain scenarios … winding down, waking up, as well as sleeping.' Hi-tech and smart products are increasingly common, like the Symfonisk lamp with speaker. … or the Symfonisk wall art with built-in speaker. His team has been embedding speakers in more and more products. There's the Symfonisk lamp with state-of-the-art sound technology and Wi-Fi, a piece of wall art with a concealed speaker, and a bookshelf speaker that looks like a sculpture. 'It doesn't impose and it can slide in between books and be forgotten,' Begic says. 'Not many people want a big, chunky and cumbersome speaker in their room, but they are very open to emerging technologies that improve life. Combining functionality with design to make it as unobtrusive as possible is the goal.' Designers demo the clever features of a new couch. IKEA has designed lighting products from its early days, but they've evolved significantly as technology has improved. They do much more than switch on and off these days. With smart home functionality, there's a 'rise and shine' wake up mode with red, warm and gradually brightening qualities that mimic a sunrise and help the body to wake naturally, as well as a wind down mode that eventually does the opposite and prepares the body for slumber. A stand-alone test lab, staffed by robots, sees products put through their paces. Each mattress is designed with the help of hi-tech data insights. There's even adaptive lighting technology that allows lights to adjust to the environment throughout the day. Prototypes developed in the lab undergo rigorous testing in a specialised facility next door, where automated machines and futuristic models ensure long-lasting quality. Can someone lay on a mattress tens of thousands of times without it losing its form and comfort? What about a lounge chair – will it still look top notch after a decade of being sat on? There's a lot involved before the next cool lamp or chic sofa winds up in a 'The product range of tomorrow starts here with us today,' Inger says, adding that there's a lot to be excited about. Like what? 'You'll see,' she smiles. Originally published as Inside IKEA's top secret product lab in Sweden, where new items are dreamt up
Korea Herald
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Explore emotional duality of high-profile choreographer at Asia premiere of double bill
Inger sees bright future for Korean contemporary dance scene Acclaimed Swedish dancer-turned-choreographer Johan Inger says he is impressed with Korea's growing commitment to contemporary dance and sees a bright future for the newly established Seoul Metropolitan Ballet. The 57-year-old artist is in Seoul for the Asia premiere of his double bill, 'Walking Mad' and 'Bliss,' set to run Friday through May 18 at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. Following Ohad Naharin's 'Decadance' in March, Inger is the latest high-profile figure in the company's bold lineup for this year. 'In Korea, you're opening new dance companies, and in the West, people are closing (them). I think it's a great initiative and should be really highlighted,' said Inger during a press conference Wednesday in Seoul. Inger, who began his career with the Royal Swedish Ballet before joining the Netherlands Dance Theater under Jiri Kylian, made his choreographic debut with NDT 2 in 1995. He went on to win the prestigious Benois de la Danse award for choreography in 2016. Inger said the two works, created 25 and 10 years ago respectively, are very different. 'I think it's an exciting evening because they show two sides of me as a choreographer,' he said. The evening begins with "Walking Mad," a more theatrical and emotionally charged piece set to Ravel's Bolero. Inger described it as 'a journey into the unknown,' full of humor, drama and human emotion. 'To me, it is a journey of a man going through a world, or a dream, or a state of mind and encountering different personalities but (still) searching. It's a little bit like Orpheus and Eurydice, being pulled back into another place and keep on searching.' The second piece, 'Bliss,' set to Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert, reflects a more stripped-down, introspective side of Inger's choreography. 'I wanted to create something very pure and simple -- just present in the moment,' he said. 'It also represents a time for me, something carefree. I wanted to capture that spirit of the time, in the costumes, in the playfulness and in the improvisation.' For Inger, music is at the heart of every work: He sees it as a partner with which he engages in conversation. He encouraged audiences, especially those unfamiliar with contemporary dance, to approach it as they would music. 'I think dance is very much like music. You hear a piece and have one interpretation of what it means to you, but the person next to you may have a completely different one,' he said. 'So if I have done my work right as a choreographer, it will tap not into the logical parts of your brain, but into the emotional parts.' What continues to drive his work, Inger said, are human beings and human relationships. 'Our strengths, our weaknesses, our ugliness, our beauty -- all the contradictions that make us who we are. That inspires me. I think that's the fuel that keeps me going, that keeps me exploring stories,' he said. hwangdh@
New York Times
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: Can Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Find a New Voice?
The lights go up on two dancers, each isolated in a zone of light. As the two trade moves and trade places, recognizable elements keep recurring: the side-to-side head isolations of Indian dance, a duck walk from vogueing, a hip-hop crotch grab. The ingredients are familiar, but the combination is novel. Such is 'A Duo,' the most exciting of three New York premieres on Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's program at the Joyce Theater this week. Under the leadership of Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell since 2021, the company still seems caught in the international-style conformity that has restricted it in the past. Previous directors had been connected to Nederlands Dance Theater and beholden to its aesthetic. They tended to program the same modish choreographers as seemingly every other repertory troupe. By the evidence of this program, Fisher-Harrell has not rejected that legacy. The bill starts with a work by the ubiquitous Ohad Naharin (the only selection not new in New York) and ends with one by the Nederlands alum Johan Inger. All the way through, what's most entertaining feels slight. But along the way come intimations of something fresh and distinctive. The choreographer of 'A Duo' is Aszure Barton, the company's resident artist. The opening night cast, Shota Miyoshi and Cyrie Topete, performed with sass and flair. What makes the piece work, though, is the music: tracks by the Catalan musician Marina Herlop that mix rhythmic syllables of the Indian Carnatic tradition with her own made-up vocalizations; it's an ersatz sound turned original. Barton's choreography matches every detail in the music with precision, and her own collage of borrowings and personal eccentricities becomes persuasive. The Naharin selection is a vintage one, 'Black Milk' from 1990. It's a primitivist ritual set to the driving yet circling marimba loops of Paul Smadbeck. Five men, shirtless in culottes, mark themselves with a dark, muddy liquid from a bucket, then process in a bouncy march or leap up and out in closely overlapping order. The work has a master choreographer's clarity but not yet a unique voice. 'Into Being,' the wispiest of the premieres, is by Alice Klock and Florian Lochner, a choreographic duo that came together as members of Hubbard Street and now goes by the name Flock. Their style involves non-gendered partnering and cat's cradle formations based on an end-over-end tumbling that can resemble, in blurred approximation, capoeira or contact improvisations. Flock seems to be after a gentle flow, but the result is an energy that doesn't make it through the body and out; everything ends up limp. No such problem troubles Inger's 'Impasse,' a high-energy, crowd-pleasing closer. Inger's scenic design begins with a house outlined in tubes of light. From the house's door emerges Simone Stevens, an ingenuous country girl greeting the day. Two pals join and mirror her in cavorting, but then people of a different sort slink out from the door: confident cool kids dressed in fashionable black. The cool kids, ferociously led by Topete, impose their style and install a smaller house in front of the first. From that house spills a showgirl, a lounge singer, Max from 'Where the Wild Things Are' and a sad-scary clown. All join in on the antics, playing chicken with dancers seated on other dancers' shoulders or everyone doing a pony step together. Inger is clever with trick moves, as when the original three dancers get into a linear loop, two swinging the third by a leg before the third gets back in line to swing the next. Tracks by the Lebanese-French trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf support Inger's escalating structure with another eclectic mix: now Balkan, now Levantine, now Latin. Inger's message, pitting the perils of peer pressure against the power of community, is spelled out all too clearly in a program note as well as acted out onstage. But the self-pleased, knowingly manipulative tone — Topete repeatedly poking her head out of the door and yelling 'Wait!' — is itself an impasse. It kept me at a remove from full enjoyment. Giving their all to Inger's synthetic style, the Hubbard Street dancers look like kids playing dress up, not entirely at home. For a super-skilled company that I hope is growing out of its old conforming ways, that slight disconnect could be a good sign.
USA Today
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Miss Anderson Goes to Washington ... and gives capital a look at Palm Beach chic
Hometown girl Bettina Anderson has always had a pronounced fashion sense. No wonder, that. It's in her DNA. Her mother Inger, a Swedish beauty, is a former model who was a style-setter among the young Palm Beach matrons of the early 1980s.
