At its annual Democratic Design Day event in Älmhult, Sweden, IKEA has revealed its latest collaborations and products, with a focus on millennials and space travel. Yes, space travel.

Mars scientists leave dome after 8 months isolation Mars Mars scientists leave dome after 8 months isolation

To this end, IKEA has done something rather drastic. It’s banished a delegation of its in-house design team to live in a simulated Mars habitat at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, America, to learn what it’s like to live in the inhospitable and cramped environs of off-world settlements.


When the company learned that Nasa and students from Sweden’s Lund University School of Industrial Design were working on what would be needed for a three-year space mission to Mars, IKEA requested to join the project.

The home furnishings giant wants to tap in to what scientists and engineers learn from spaceflight to Mars, and apply these discoveries to products and methods for everyday life at home. Marcus Engman, head of design at IKEA, said the company wants to find out what could make space travel “homey” and to identify the boundaries and restraints needed to work in that environment, and then port that knowledge into IKEA’s own product development and “use space knowledge for a better everyday life on Earth”.

"My design team is out in Utah living the way that you're supposed to live when you are on Mars in a typical habitat - just to learn and experience," Engman told WIRED. "It's the same way we work with home visits, but this is a home in space. They get into the vibe to explore what we could do that we don't think of today for for products for Earth. They're going to have to do everything that you have to do when you are on Mars, including the problematic stuff with going to the toilet, all of it."


According to United Nations, the proportion of the world’s population that will be living in urban environments will be 70 per cent by 2050. With this in mind, Engman thinks space-saving will be a key battleground for interior design.

Constance Adams, Nasa consultant and space architect, whose role it is to work out what exactly is needed in space for vehicles and habitats, is guiding the IKEA designers through their seven days in the Mars simulation in Utah. “The things we assume are a constant, such as gravity, change in these environments. The only thing that remains the same is the human,” she said.

Transporting every 1kg of mass to Mars costs around $2million, which explains why weight-saving in space travel is key. As a result, the intrepid IKEA team will be getting, among other things, lessons on food production and new types of materials.

As part of the collaboration, IKEA hopes to contribute in some way to the habitat that Nasa is planning to put on Mars, in particular the interior. "Through Lund University we could do a thing together with NASA that could end up in in the habitat," Engman said. "We don't have a direct relationship with NASA. We work together with Lund University who work with NASA, and we work on the same problem. That's how we do it. But the scope is to learn how make our homes here smarter. And also new production techniques and new materials."


But while most will not be able to enjoy this “homey” version of space living, IKEA plans to bring out some products – a “curious collection on space” – in 2019.

Engman could not confirm exactly what would be in the space collection but gave a rough estimate of its size: "Is it's still all up in the air but it's going to end up as something like 30 articles or so."

Jesper Kouthoofd from Teenage Engineering, left, and Marcus Engman, middle, head of design at IKEA WIRED

At the Democratic Design Day event, IKEA also announced it is working with Teenage Engineering. The creative and design company, which brought out the OD-11 wireless loudspeaker‎ and OP-1 portable synthesiser, has apparently already created a range of 22 prototype objects and products all geared towards “throwing a great party”. Coming to IKEA stores globally by February 2019, this collection for cutting loose, called FREKVENS, will include an electronic choir and record player as well as lighting systems.

"Some of it is of course electronics," said Engman, "but some of it is very far from being electronic. Life in music is going to be part of it. And actually even looking into garments."


"I think it's been kind of fun to put their engineering skills into doing stuff that they usually don't do at all. That's the way that I like to work with all of our designers - to put them in a predicament, something that they're not used to so they forget their line of thinking and explore new ways."

And, as if to deal with the resulting whiff of all those impromptu get-togethers, in a slightly stranger new collaboration, IKEA will also be joining forces with Ben Gorham from fragrance company Byredo to develop ways of using smell as a form of “invisible design”. The aim, apparently, will be to stimulate memories of those in the home using different forms of scent delivery rather than bog-standard scented candles.

"How people talk about homes is all about memories, so this makes sense for us," Engman said.