First announced last year at Ikea's annual Democratic Design Day, the open-source Delaktig sofa is anything you want it to be. Built as a simple, aluminum-framed piece that's primarily a bed, it's meant to be "hackable" by designers who can add all sorts of different features like shelves or even a baby's crib. Fittingly, Delaktig is Swedish for "being part of something."
Bemz — a Swedish company known for creating slipcovers and accessories for the Swedish furniture giant's products — will be among the companies helping to trick out the Delaktig, and its textile covers will be available concurrently with the Delaktig's launch early next year.
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"One of the inspirations for the project was the hacking community that exists out there and the idea that there might be things that we can't think of that people might want to add," the Delaktig's designer Tom Dixon told The Wall Street Journal in January.
Bemz' first idea for a design, above, is delightfully furry, 1970s-inspired, and, dare we say, shagadelic. The groovy couch was unveiled for Milan Design Week earlier this month, according to Lonny magazine, which also called it "the most glam Ikea hack, ever."
"We have developed an extra furry cover in brownish-black Icelandic long-haired sheepskin destined to transform the Delaktig sofa from a hyper-normal Ikea product into a super-texture Tom Dixon seating sculpture," Dixon told Lonny. "This illustrates in the most extreme way the transformative nature of the project, where a new cover manufactured by Bemz can completely change the character of your sofa through the power of design. A previously sensible, minimal, and rational bed sofa transforms into a moody, dark, and tactile animal."
In other words, this is Ikea like you've never seen it before — and there's more on the way. The line is expected to launch at Ikea and on Bemz.com in February 2018.