Lobster in a Bucket

DIY, Ikea, and this Modern World

Ikea is kind of the grand-daddy of design on the cheap. They've done it very well. My parents drooled over Ikea when I was a kid, and my friends do today. They've done a great job of offering affordable, and beautiful things. And they'll still make plenty of money for the forseeable future. But as this article touches on, I think that people are becoming more and more dissatisfied with the whole idea of buying beautiful. We want to make it, or hack it.

I think our dissatisfaction is in part because anti-corparate sentiments are at a high. Yuppies and anarchists hate Wal-mart. So we don't want to just buy from stores all the objects that we use to express our identity. And as the NYT articles says, our lives are more and more devoid of tactile work, so consequently, we need more tactile fun. And also I think our sociability and productivity depends on technology that might as well be magic for all we know. My ipod, cell phone, car, laptop etc. As the majority of our lives are spent dependent on these things that we don't understand, it makes perfect sense that we'd want to exert control over the furniture, the food, the decorations, and even the tech objects that we do "get".

I think this is where the whole DIY movement comes from. Magazines like Make, it's little sibling Craft, and many others don't seem to lack for user submitted content. Me, I like to make my own bread. Not pumpkin date loaf, or anything fancy. Just bread that I can eat three meals a day, with whatever else I'm scarfing down.
Posted by matt at September 6, 2007 2:51 PM | TrackBack