Milan Salone 2017 Preview: Modular living

Milan – Ikea will explore the changing functionality of the living room in its Let’s Make Room for Life festival.

Let’s Make Room for Life will celebrate the living room through design, music and live events
The modular Delaktig range by Tom Dixon explores adaptability and future-proofing

Open House at IKEA Festival Let's Make Room for Life, Milan

Tom Dixon at IKEA Festival Let’s Make Room for Life, Milan

Home Smart by IKEA Festival Let’s Make Room for Life, Milan

IKEA Festival Let’s Make Room for Life, Milan

Although the rising cost of living and expanding urban populations means that living rooms are decreasing in size, their importance as the heart of everyday life at home remains constant. This is the concept behind Ikea’s Let’s Make Room for Life festival, which plays with the idea of creating a more multifunctional, technology-integrated design for the living room space that ‘meet[s] the functional and emotional needs of modern living’.

Located in a warehouse in the Lambrate district, the festival will explore ideas of sustainability, personalisation and sociability. The Swedish furniture manufacturer will show collaborations with Danish designers HAY, British designer Tom Dixon and the creative platform Design Indaba, among others.

Tom Dixon will introduce his Delaktig bed and sofa unit, a modular piece that is able to assume different identities throughout its lifetime through at-home modification.

The Big Picture

Exhibitions such as Let’s Make Room For Life and Domestic Appeal are exploring our evolving relationship with the home and encouraging design proposals that better fit with the technological, emotionally driven world in which we live. Check back next week for more coverage of Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2017.