From Vittsjo coffee tables to Raskog utility carts, all of Ikea’s roughly 10,000 products are evaluated in the company’s highly secure design lab. If you slept on an Ikea futon in your youth, or use its Ribba frames to hang expensive art today, you have lived an aesthetic determined here. The lab is housed at the corporate headquarters in Almhult, in rural Sweden. Founded here in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, Ikea now has 422 stores spread across 50 countries and territories, and last year, its revenue was more than $42 billion. Top and left: views of simple meeting rooms, with functional accessories; right: what the company calls “work boxes.”

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