Unlock the publisher's digest free
Roula Khalaf, editor -in -chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is the architecture and the conception of the FT
Oxford Street and his neighborhood were once the heart of the retail sale of London furniture. Huge stores like Maple & Co, Waring & Gillow, Liberty and Heals have been stacked with sumptuous pieces in exotic environments, or later with elegant and rationalized pieces that introduced modernism to the masses. Vast windows have enabled luxurious displays and parts parameters have announced changes in metropolitan taste, a constant panorama of design and constantly evolving crafts.
Last week, IKEA opened its new store in Oxford Circus in what was formerly the Peter Robinson department store and more recently Topshop. After a long gestation, the mainly underground interior reopened its doors while a warren dug through cheap stuff stacked high, beaten with buyers and, on the day of opening, a DJ and staff distributing free blue bags. Mayor Sadiq Khan was also there, deceiving a renewal of a street which suffered decades of decline.
It is a curious view; The garish blue and the yellow of the retail sale with large surfaces arriving in the trading street formerly first. It may be good for the step, but it doesn't seem a step. The windows are blackened with large and ugly advertisements. This is a shop that gives nothing to the public domain. Once inside, you are in the labyrinth without a familiar window that is wrapped, like Dusty Free when you want to go to the door, apparently forever.
If the old Oxford Street Department Stores tried to seduce by luxury, the new IKEA intends to impress with the quantity and low prices. The aspiration is replaced by realism. Despite the parameters of the room based on the adorable dimensions of real living spaces (rather than ideal) of young Londoners, the suggestion is that you too could live the Scandi dream, surrounded by affordable cushions, resplendent in the modernist hygge gay.
However, while I mainly looked at young customers loading their bags with cheaper plates and cutlery than a bag of chips, I couldn't help but ask myself if it's really the future.
Ikea's early success in the United Kingdom was based on a desperate generation to escape the aesthetics of their parents' houses – three -room suites, porcelain trinkets and flickering red glow of the electric fire. They wanted to live as modern adults in modern houses, with chic shelves and cool low tables, Venetian blinds rather than booty, to live as people have done in lofts. The retailer's trick was to create coherent room parameters that allowed customers to see themselves in a contemporary environment entirely equipped with matching ranges; Well lit, coordinated and fun color.
The reality of course was different. Everything seemed worse in the requirements of real and lived domestic space. And then there was self-assembly. The transfer of production to the customer, unpaid work hours allowing IKEA to make greater benefits thanks to ease of transport, caused frustration and resentment.
Will young people of today be as seduced as previous generations? For many, the lifestyles and generous spaces of their parents are not a memory of stifling conservatism but an impossible dream. Trends do not seem to be to throw chintz but to bring it back, creating the cottured vision cluttered with comfortable domesticity. Or the clean and modern interiors of the middle of the century of an optimism period when the design could solve problems – teak buffets and Danish chairs. Even long -rich brown furniture, drawers and dining tables, are once again appreciated as durable objects, an incredible quality compared to flat fiber packs.
The retail aesthetics of Ikea transplanted into the West End seems a little obscene, like too much cheap tters. It is a reminder of overproduction and, no matter how much its philosophy could be egalitarian, modern and respectful of the environment, it resembles a rapid fashion for interiors, an overconsumption architecture.
