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Being at Ikea on a Saturday afternoon was probably not a smart move, but we had a long power outage and it seemed like the time to pick up some new storage shelves. Crowds. It gives me pause to look at a bookshelf. I remember a debate I once had over the merits of Ikea as an improvement on the landscape of North American design. There’s a generation now that has grown up the warm embrace of particleboard and M6 hardware. Looking at the rows of desks and bookcases I paused to consider. Is this “good” design? It’s missing something important to me.
I ran my hand over the melamine edge tape. It was ragged and sharp and there was a faint scab of glue from an edgebander with worn buffers. It seems to me the design is good only in terms of an efficient use of materials and the fact that it requires no human interaction in the manufacturing process. It fails in both durability and comfort. Still, what choice did I have? Good design or no, $59 is a far cry from the $200 and four hours of effort it would take me to build something I’d be happy with. I wonder where the line is. How much income does someone need to have things both satisfying in form and built from honest materials?
