Published 04 June 2019 • Inter IKEA newsroom

IKEA and Saint Heron to explore what matters in the disruptive home

The concept of home is changing like never before, not least in our big cities. With GÅTFULL, a new series of forthcoming products, IKEA and the creative collective Saint Heron explore how inspiration from music, arts, fashion and urban culture can be combined with functional home design.

Saint Heron, founded by artist Solange Knowles, describes itself as a cultural hub, building an inclusive community based on artist and artisan collaborations and collective work. Sprung from the disruptive multi-disciplinary design culture growing in our big cities, the community works with a variety of expressions, such as sculptures, ceramics, music, visual art and performance art. Saint Heron is about developing ideas together.

“For IKEA it’s exciting to have the opportunity to work with Saint Heron and learn from their way of working. I believe that the collective mindset and approach that they have is very inspiring and is something that IKEA already aims at. We are living in an age where the community spirit is a driving force in developing a meaningful economy,” says Henrik Most, Creative leader at IKEA.

When living spaces in our cities become scarce, new demands and expectations grow. Functionality needs to be combined with objects that we really like aesthetically, can relate to and makes us feel at home.

“The modernistic view of design is often that form should follow function. That we start with a perceived need, the function, and then find a design for that. In this collaboration, form also follows our emotions and here we have a lot to learn from creative frontrunners such as Saint Heron,” says Henrik Most.

The philosophy behind the GÅTFULL collection explores time, space, light and matter and will result in a new series of design objects that not only fulfil a functional value at home but also can be seen as precious objects in themselves.

“Our focus is to design objects with multifunctional uses,” says Armina Mussa, Co-Art Director of Saint Heron. “In this collaboration with IKEA we hope to empower imagination, and deepen the thought behind usability.”

Being visionary and open, reflecting about how the human mind works and perceives things in various ways, experimenting with new materials, different colours and seeing product development in a new light were the central components of the creative process for the upcoming collection.

“It’s about combining the two elements, an artistic way of working with functional product design”, says Henrik Most.

The collection is due to be presented in 2021.