Crazy how few of their decades old designs look "wrong" today. Their combination of high quality design, low price, and (depending on price...) workable to good build quality is pretty unique.
* The POÄNG chair is a copy of Alvar Aalto's 406.
* Nakamura's earlier POEM copied both the 406 and a chair by Bruno Mathsson.
* FROSTA (now discontinued) is a copy of Aalto's Stool 60.
* KROMVIK copied Bruno Mathsson's Ulla bed frame.
* BORE copied Mathsson's Karin chair.
And so on. Ironically, some of these also have become classics of their own, or at least sought-after vintage objects.
IKEA sometimes comes up with original, sometimes novel designs, but generally they copy better designs with worse manufacturing quality rather than coming up with original ones.
And they are genuinely worse in terms of construction. For example, if you compare the wood quality of a FROSTA with Aalta's stool it's night and day. FROSTA is just plywood cut to size. The Aalto stool is solid birch, with a plywood top and an elegant solid birch veneer for the edge band, and the legs use a unique plywood-like join that is a thing of beauty [1].
[1] https://www.alvaraalto.fi/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/l-jalka...
Yes, I understand the whole "copying isn't innovation" part of the argument, but it is for the greater good.
Design objects are vastly, ridiculously overpriced, but to me that's unrelated to the issue of design. An Aalto chair might not be "worth" $2,000, but if you buy the $200 IKEA version you won't have the same chair, so it's not a direct comparison. That's like saying why go to Hawaii when there's Belgium?
My point was, we should encourage copycats if it will reduce the price point even if it brings 80% of the joy to the buyer, compared to owning the designer chair, which is not attainable for them.
A 406 costs ×20 more (£1600 vs £80).
Does the 406 have cleaner lines? Yes.
Is it comfier? The 406 doesn't have a cushioned seat so, maybe or maybe not.
Will it last longer? Probably. But the IKEA one comes with a 10 year warranty and unless you treat it badly it'll probably last far longer than that.
Hard to argue that the IKEA POÄNG isn't great value for the people who have other priorities.
When I look back through photos of my student years, Poängs are in so, so many of the pictures. The chair itself is arguably relatively unoffensive; I just find its prevalence deeply boring.
Second however, engineering products in such a way that you can bring down the price by 95% while quality/niceness/longevity only suffers (let's say) 25% is a thing to marvel at. Having 75% of a €265 design stool in your house for €25 is fantastic.
Good furniture lasts hundreds of years!
It's solid wood, so it'll probably last another 40 years at least.
The 1959 catalog had thin, svelte, curved and up angled designs. The Mid 80's had plump, puffy, overstuffed and was quite tame-loud, whereas the 2020's has "I'm not here, white-black-pop of color" aesthetics.
[1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/billy-bookcase-combination-brow...