Day 9: Stockholm to Copenhagen

(Finally, I've added the last day from our Scandinavia trip!)

Friday, July 18th, 2008

The last day was fairly short, and much was spent in the bus sleeping, but it was just about the most that we could do because it had been a very long week. Morning, however, started on the boat, around 3:30 in the morning:









It was just gorgeous! Not many people were outside for it, probably about 4 other people from our trip, but Flemming came out to enjoy it with us.

Then we headed for our final buffet breakfast, seated at the front of the boat.

After packing our stuff up and arriving at the dock, everyone headed off the boat and to our bus, to finally get some sleep as we drove to our first stop, IKEA!



Almhult is the home of IKEA, and I expected everything to make up some sort of IKEAland, which it actually did. Almost every street name involved IKEA in some way and the many many warehouses that make it up were dispersed throughout the town.

The first warehouse we toured was the Pattern Shop, a building where the latest textiles and furniture are born. It take about 2-4 years from concept to release to make a new piece, but if you think that doesn't involve much work, think again. They produce about 1600-1700 prototypes a year! And that is made possible because of computers and their state-of-the-art prototyping machine. And they only have 13 people in the shop during their open season (they take the whole season of summer off).

New fabrics, after being designed on the computer, are printed out on a canvas plotter so that designers can get an accurate idea of what the final product will look like. I promptly put one of those on my Christmas list.

IKEA has only 12 in house designers. Most of their products come from their 70 hired freelance designers. This information we got from one of their in-house designers, who took us through the IKEA Museum, a large permanent exhibit showcasing their most popular and innovative pieces of furniture over the years. One thing I learned is that the company actually got its start selling pencils, not furniture. And from that, it grew to be the powerhouse of design that it is today.

The designer that we talked to told us what the rough design process is at IKEA when they've decided to create a new piece.

"To get an idea of what needs to be designed, we look at the product matrix–what exists, what can be combined, and what can be gotten rid of."

"Sometimes they (the project managers) tell us exactly the criteria for a new piece, like that they want a rocking chair made of wood and wicker, that folds up. But sometimes there is very little criteria and we can experiment with something new."

It was really neat to get to talk to a designer about his own process as well as IKEA's. I definitely could have spent all day there, picking his brain about the profession.

But it was time to move on, so we got back on the bus and took a nice long sleep while driving towards lunch, a quick stop at a highway-side cafeteria. Then it was back to driving across Sweden and ending the day, driving across the bridge that connects Denmark with Sweden, finally entering Copenhagen.

Overall, it was a very exciting and educational trip, a wonderful supplement to my study abroad experience!