Dutch designers Oatmeal Studio have hacked IKEA furniture to create a pop-up restaurant where diners pick their own tableware and cut their own tablecloths (+ slideshow.)
Located at the Filmhuis Den Haag theatre in The Hague, the IkHa restaurant is based on an IKEA showroom and is filled with wooden shelving units that integrate both storage areas and dining tables.
Diners tear their tablecloths and placements from wallpaper rolls that hang from the walls, before making their order using a pad and pencil.
The project is part of the wider "IKEA hacking" movement where designers modify or repurpose the Swedish brand’s products and publish them on the website IkeaHackers.net.
This week IKEA has installed a temporary airport lounge in Paris, which you can see here.
Photography is by Nadine Stijns.
Here's a project description from Oatmeal Studio:
Oatmeal Studio hacks Ikea
IkHa is a dining experience by Oatmeal Studio, where the concept of IKEA has been dismantled and translated into a restaurant interior. It’s not a self service restaurant in the usual sense of the word. Instead, visitors are invited to participate and customize their surroundings while dining.
While ‘IKEA hacking’ – or creating spaces using the budget-savvy Swedish brand’s products in new ways - is a popular trend,the designers say they wanted to extend this concept.
IkHa is based on the showroom of IKEA itself.
A maze of shelves and rooms to navigate, often multiple times as one reconsiders their choices, and then arrives home with their flat-packed goods to begin the assembly process. Fortunately, they also sell Swedish Meatballs.
Guests fill in their ordering forms with pencils and dinner is served on trays, delivered to the furniture construction at which they’ve chosen to sit.
Visitors can create their table setting from a selection of materials and cut their own tablecloth or placemat from a selection of wallpapers, ready to measure and cut.
“Even the Swedish meatballs are hacked”...and very nice, according to one patron of the restaurant.
One of IKEA slogans is “Big ideas for small spaces”, an important aspect of the IkHa restaurant. Everything is collapsible and fold-able and when not in use can be quickly broken down to fit within a two square meter space.
This makes it ideal for temporary solutions, events, and festivals, according to the designers.
The restaurant is located in the Filmhuis/Den Haag Theatre in The Hague, the Netherlands, and can be visited until 30 July.
“Dutch designers Oatmeal Studio have hacked IKEA furniture to create a pop-up restaurant” – I hate the use of ‘trendy’ words like “hacked”. It seems like Oatmeal have gone to a huge amount of effort to achieve so little.
Three things make for a good eatery: ambience, service and the food.
The ambience of this place wouldn’t draw me in, and I suppose the service will only be as good as the customer.
Hopefully the food is good.
Have you ever set up an IVAR shelving with not enough boards? It is not stable at all. I hope the structure does not fall as people use it.
The space looks boring to me. In my opinion nothing was gained using that IKEA furniture in this way. Any normal table would have done better.
Oh God get me a gun before I die of boredom.
As bland as oatmeal.
I like it! Simple is good sometimes.
Inoovative concept. But it looks more like a lab than a restaurant.
It would be great if people before leaving comments would also read the articles.
This project, ’cause is mainly an art project before being a restaurant, is based on the “hacking” of Ikea’s typical nightmares such as walking in fixed path behind a very slow family or ordering the issues/food on a form with articles code and pencils as you do in a real Ikea.
That’s the topic of the whole project, not the Ikea furnitures hacking which is done, done and done again.