Will the new era of architecture be the era of IKEA urbanism? IKEA has proposed to build a complete neighborhood in East London. The Swedish furniture giant tries to implement its ideas and concepts in new fields of knowledge and urbanism. After its injection of each single family’s interior with cheap design furniture and the introduction of the IKEA standard house by daughter company BoKlok, it seems to be time for a complete IKEA neighborhood, reports the Huffington Post, LandProp — also part of the IKEA group — is planning to build a neighborhood of 1,200 houses, shops, cafés and a 350-room hotel.
The whole 26 acres site near the Olympic Park in Stratford will be surrounded by two waterways and will have water as a central concept. London’s brand new ‘mini-Venice’ will offer all all opportunities to residents to make the most of their waterside location by using the moorings, water taxi service, and even a floating cocktail bar. The whole building operation should start in 2013 after permission is given.
“The aim is to create a friendly neighbourhood idyll, with courtyards and a public square to encourage interaction, and the unsightly aspects of life will be kept to a minimum. Cars will be parked underground and rubbish will be discreetly disposed of through underground tunnels. A school, health surgery and nursery will be built to minimise inconvenient travel.”
Yes, a simple and affordable family product in a design jacket, as we could expect from the world’s largest furniture retailer. The people who buy it might love it and also London Mayor Boris Johnson is enthusiast as he states that this is the second largest private investment rippling out of the 2012 Olympic legacy in Stratford, the other one is the Westfield Shopping mall.
But is this good for the professional fields of architecture and urbanism? As an experiment it’s great. Would the principles, logics and ideas of a multinational company work when copied to urbanism? Does the perfect neighborhood that suits everyone exist? As an experiment it’s interesting, and also for bloggers and other media it’s nice. But can IKEA do the same to urbanism as what it did to interior design? Is it able to create neighborhoods that are as comfortable, cheap, good-looking and popular with the majority as its furniture? Perhaps it can, with its design skills as well as its capacity to organize big areas, as IKEA did to its shops that almost turned into complete villages themselves.
On the other hand, we should conclude that ‘one-size-fits-all urbanism’ will not be good for the variety and attractiveness of cities in general. Imagine the same number of people to live in an IKEA house as owning a Billy cupboard… These neighborhoods are not meant to solve problems or improve the city to some extent. In essence they are there to earn money for the company. The simple idea of IKEA is to give the people what they think they want. But people that have they wanted are bored, unhappy and unsatisfied. I think this neighborhood will feel the same as everything else from IKEA as soon as it’s realized. It looks better in the brochure than in real.
This article belongs to a series of posts on the future of working, collaboration, architecture and design, presented by HP Designjet printing solutions and written by The Pop-Up City.
6 Comments
“these neighborhoods are not meant to solve problems or improve the city to some extent. I essence they are there to earn money for the company.”
And the problem is?… How many neighborhoods have been created with the express goal of solving social ills and not making money? Land development, in most western nations at least, is a money making venture. The bit examples of neighborhoods, certainly in the united states, were created by early land speculators developing inner ring suburbs on greenfield land for a profit. These neighborhoods are walkable, have a great variety of locally-owned businesses, are well connected to transit, and are lower-carbon by design: organic, sometimes accidental, and profit driven design.
You can’t fault Ikea’s subsidiary from viewing this as a business venture, and I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be able to develop a walkable, pleasant neighborhood. The greater concerns relate to the economic diversity and the aesthetics of the neighborhood. I would hope there are some requirements in place regarding the provision of affordable housing. I would also hope that the neighborhood isn’t designed with a broad brush architecturally. One of the keys to designing a neighborhood in one fell swoop that doesn’t appear overly uniform and bland (think barcelona’s Olympic village neighborhood) is to have a great degree of architectural and urban design variability.
I’m not ready to criticize IKEA for mass production of neighborhoods while they’re still tossing around the idea of developing their first one. Also, I’m also not against neighborhoods that provide for people what they think they want. That usually works out better than giving people what I think they want (or giving people what we all agree they don’t want).
Is there any difference in the proposed IKEA-build neighborhood and thousands of cookie-cutter towns and cities in the United States. Everyone with their own corner overlooking every other similar corner. The ultimate design in boredom.
The images of two and three story suburban buildings in pastoral settings have nothing to do with the aerial perspective of the plan. Let’s hope they are not related to IKEA’s ideas for London. Urbanism does not include such banalities.
If you do a little homework into Toronto history, a certain neighborhood called “Regeant Park” was built pretty much the same way… to ‘solve’ the so-called problems of the neighborhood it replaced…
Long-term outcome: they’re demo’ing to build condo style highrise versions of the same thing… at least they look nice, but I’m unsure if any issues were resolved…
Is cookie-cutter label centric living really a solution for anything? Or am I missing something and the goal is to either blend or smudge the lines of conformity?
Is this progress?
Has “hip/trendy” become predictable in the same way that the unexpected is what one has come to expect?
Looking at the illustration of the model two omissions are obvious to me: There doesn’t appear to be any provison for the inhabitants of this development to have any kind of garden, and none of the roofs have any “green” covering. This means that residents won’t be able to grown any of their own food (even a tomato plant!) and that when it rains (come 0n guys – this is London after all), all the run-off from the impermeable surfaces, including the roofs, will enter the storm drains and will most likely cause local flooding, and result in polluted run-off entering the water system. Also, the model shows a paucity of trees planted; well-researched data on the value of trees in an urban environment is available, and should be consulted and applied here. Just two of the benefits of having trees growing in a city are that they improve the air-quality by absorbing carbon dioxide and giving off oxygen, and they help minimise heat radiated from hard surfaces in warm weather. The design for this neighborhood would be greatly improved if these elements were included.
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