IKEA takes home beyond the four walls in H22 City Expo

IKEA is passionate about making life at home better. Using our values, knowledge, and genuine curiosity, IKEA wants to make a positive impact in homes and neighborhoods. H22 City Expo is a true innovation platform and a unique chance for IKEA to test new ideas, technologies, solutions, and business models.

“In a straight collaboration with the city and the local community, we created for H22 City Expo unique meeting places, and we are exploring the future of Life at Home, inside and outside the four walls. We want to test and learn how to lay a foundation where locally relevant initiatives and activities can be upscaled and later be taken to other Ingka Group markets”, says Belén Frau, Global Communication Manager of Ingka Group.

DM: a multipurpose marketplace for the many people

DM stands for Do More, is a new brand powered by Ingka Group to test a new business model for community engagement that lives as a multipurpose marketplace with pop-up stores, markets, urban farm, a food court, events, school activities and a place to meet and great. Located in a socially deprived area in the northeast part of Helsingborg called Drottninghög, to integrate communities and give people living there, who for several reasons are far away from the local labor market, the possibility to use DM as a springboard for employment, hiring them and promoting self-employment and entrepreneurship.

Its revenue model is divided in: DM Market (market), DM Äta (food), DM Odla (urban farm) and DM Recruit (employment opportunities). These initiatives have already generated more than 50 job opportunities at DM and the IKEA Helsingborg store.

“We hope that DM, together with our other meeting-points, will be a positive force in the local community, creating jobs and giving the residents the opportunity of creation and togetherness. Thanks to those initiatives, we have recruited about 50 new co-workers, who for different reasons were far from the Swedish labour market – 12 of them work at DM”, adds Fredrik Håkansson Lundh, Area Manager, IKEA Retail Sweden.   

IKEA Festival at Magasin 405 – home and its future in different situations

Magasin 405 lives in the old harbor of Helsingborg in a three-floors cultural monument and it´s the key touch point for IKEA in H22 City Expo. In this historic warehouse, IKEA is exploring Life at Home and its different future situations with:

• ÖGONBLICK exhibition – IKEA created seven different sets together with scenographer Midori Hasuike and Mikael Varhelyi and some senior interior designers from IKEA. It shows Life at Home in a completely different way than is normally seen at any IKEA customer meeting point, every set inviting the visitors for interaction.
   
• Life at Home Stories exhibition – A series of 60 short documentaries about people from all walks of life and their Life at Home in different countries of the world.
   
• First Home exhibition – where IKEA is taking a different approach on affordability, looking at what people need to own and what you can share with others, exploring different living situations for those first homers and homes that caters for different types of people and our individual needs.
• Own brands and partners – creating experiences and interactions with Geomagical (3D home furnishing design software), C40 (social housing, zero organic waste and retrofitted to net zero), Space10 (design experience), RetourMatras (recycling of mattresses) or IKEA Foundation (Concepts of Home installation from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the IKEA Foundation).

This venue includes an IKEA Mall with IKEA products (mainly home furnishing accessories) curated in new ways like the Japandi shop (mix of Japanese and Scandinavian design), Join the circus shop, Plant shop and Color shops and an IKEA Museum pop-up shop. Visitors also get a food court with four different spaces that gives the opportunity for visitors to experience our food offer which is an amplification of the 2025 IKEA Food strategy, where we are introducing new tastes and well-known classics wrapped in plant-based ingredients: E.g. There is KORVKIOSK where hot dogs meet fine-dining, BULLERIA with plant balls, FRASIG with waffles, and TUNNBRÖD with flatbreads with different toppings.

Finally, on the outside stage where artists, among many others, like Phlake, Sarah Klang, and The Hellacopters will perform. Several talks on Democratic Design and the Oracle pod created by IKEA just for the H22 City Expo will be recorded live.

“IKEA Festival is all about making people come together around things that inspire them and that are important to them in their everyday life. Topics like Life at Home, music, food and design in particular. That’s what was on our mind when filling this old 4500 square meters warehouse with food, creativity, and inspiration. I look forward to seeing the space fill up with people having a good time”, says Marcus Engman, Chief Creative Officer at Ingka Group.

Skogen: a mobile forest with flatpack future homes

Just outside Magasin 405, you find Skogen, a modular, mobile, and transportable forest, where four universities and three young creatives show their innovative and creative designs of future outdoor living in the form of temporary nature dwellings.

Together with Spacon & X, IKEA challenged École Cantonale d’art de Lausanne, Lund University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts to create new communities with democratic design first homes of dwellings. Also, developed a global contest for young creatives with the same challenge, that had more than 60 participants from all over the world. The three finalists, whose winner will be announced in IKEA Festival at Fuorisalone 2022 next week, are:

• Finalist 1 – “Returning to nature”, Marcus Badman, Sweden
• Finalist 2 – “Tree-House”, Emma Jurczynski, United States of America
• Finalist 3 – “Cork Loop”, Otis Sloan Brittain, Portugal/The United Kingdom

“We wanted to tap into the brains of young creatives, so we reached out to four universities, and we also made an open call to the rest of the world. I’m very happy to see the students’ different interpretations of the task. It’s when we collaborate like this that great and unexpected things happen. Now when it all has come to life, we are more than happy to share the result with the world”, adds Marcus.

IKEA-Marimekko collection: revelation of 1st pattern, 1st product and collection name

In April, IKEA and Marimekko announced that the two iconic brands were teaming up to create a collection inspired by the sauna culture and its deep roots in the Nordic lifestyle. The launch of the collection is planned for March 2023. In H22 City Expo Marimekko and IKEA reveal the 1st pattern, the 1st product, a shower curtain, and the collection name: BASTUA.

“We are super proud of this collaboration and happy to bring BASTUA to H22 and Fuorisalone to reveal this ’collection’s first pattern and product”, says Henrik Most, Creative Leader at IKEA of Sweden. “The shower curtain is consciously made using recycled polyester and will be exclusively available for visitors. It is a great chance to get a glimpse of BASTUA and a product before the full collection launches next year”, Marcus continues.

“We at Marimekko are really excited about this collaboration, and we are thrilled to be able to share more about our design philosophy, the collaboration inspiration and what’s to come in these two special events. We are looking forward to meeting our communities both in Helsingborg and Milan”, says Rebekka Bay, Creative Director at Marimekko.

All three IKEA arenas and events in H22 City Expo are free access to visitors.

IKEA program in H22 City Expo available here – Programme – H22 at IKEA – and more information in H22 at IKEA.

For Media assets go to: www.ingka.com/newsroom/media-resources/events-press-kits/h22/.

*The international city fair H22 City Expo is the biggest event for innovation and sustainable urban development in the Nordic region in 2022 and a major initiative by Helsingborg city in Sweden, to develop future welfare solutions aimed at improving quality of life in a smarter, more sustainable city. The city’s work with H22 consists of two parts: 1. A city-wide innovation initiative. It is about the journey towards becoming a smarter and more sustainable city. 2. H22 City Expo – A stop along the way where we shine a light on all that has been achieved between now and the summer of 2022. More about it here: H22 City Expo 2022.