African rituals meet Scandi in the new Ikea collection

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Överallt is the new collection in limited edition created by Ikea in collaboration with African designers, available in stores from May 2019.

Furniture, tableware, textiles, rugs, cushions and even a bag. The collection comes from Ikea’s partnership with Design Indaba, the creative festival of Cape Town dedicated to design.

Africa becomes more and more the place for a new creative explosion where to find new talents and new inspirations. Here Ikea tries to mix its Scandi DNA with African patterns, colors and cultural traditions.
The particularity of this collection is that the whole ideation has been entrusted to a group of designers, architects, artists and creatives coming from five African Countries.

“Because they are a furniture company, we didn’t necessarily go and pick furniture designers. We actually picked good thinkers. We just went across and found people who are really getting out there, taking risks and expressing themselves, and who represented the best of the African creative garde.” Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo

They asked to designers to investigate new urban rituals and their importance in the everyday life. The starting point was to explore this area connected to socializing around food, indoor and outdoor living, the rituals around expressing identity and sustainability. From there, the design and development process has resulted in a collection of products that is all about building bridges and discovering the “urban living room” together with others.

Egyptian studio Reform Studio designed a bag using crisps packets, usually very difficult to recycle. These creates strands of silver through the fabrics, beautiful effect!

Issa Diabaté is an architect and designer from the Ivory Coast who designed for the Överallt collection by Ikea an armchair using a single plywood sheet. A functional, beautiful and economical object that does not need nails, glue or screws.