Pop-up Paper Ikea House

Materials: Images of IKEA products

Description: A while ago I designed a pop-up paper house using exclusively Ikea products: all the furniture, obviously, but also all the accessories, sheets, framed artwork, towels, lights, even the floor treatment came from their store. My idea, of course, was to become rich and famous. I would show Ikea my work, they would hail me as a brilliant designer and give me lots of money to design a new house each year, to match their yearly catalogue. It seemed like the perfect idea for them: if mass produced this could be a very inexpensive toy, it is completely wholesome even though it blatantly promotes their products, it folds flat for storage not just in the store but also for the end user (and we all know how obsessed Ikea is with flat storage), plus they could come out with a new house every year and tap into kids' natural tendency to hoard and collect!

Sadly, my dreams did not come true. I just got an unsigned form letter informing me they weren't interested in whatever it was I had sent them. When I wrote back asking if I could use their images to sell the house on my own they didn't even bother reply, so I went back to the drawing board and stripped my house of everything which is recognizably Ikea.

So here is the Ikea hack which isn't. If you'd like to build the house you can (by following the links you can get templates with precise instructions), but the book or PDF download no longer contains Ikea stuff. But you know what? It's much nicer now! (these photos are of the old Ikea version)

~ Katherine Belsey

See more of Katherine's pop-up paper Ikea house