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April 14, 2004
knock down furniture
The Observer this week had a great interview with Terence Conran and Tom Dixon. For all the sins of Conran's restaurants, Habitat was one of the most influential stores in the 60s and 70s. Tom Dixon is the current design director, well respected, and guiding the product ranges under the influence of Habitat's current owners, Ikea.
Conran: 'Most of us had this Bauhaus idea in our heads that if something was intelligently designed and priced at a price that most people could afford, they might like it and buy it. It was always a price thing, because designed things at that stage were very expensive, mainly because they were sold in very small quantities, so what I was trying to do was say: look at this, if you like it, well you can afford it, too.'
Dixon: 'You always talk about design but what I find distinctive is almost everything else - whether it's fine cigars or food or art or Provence or whatever. Your distinction is the love of everything that is non-design, and the fact that you apply that to manufacturing and wood and all of the stuff that surrounds it, which makes your take on design more interesting as a result, because it's about how you use those things in what you do.'
'I always think you would be much better off being young in Silicon Valley now because that's where the creativity is happening, rather than being in a sector that hasn't seen a great deal of innovation since that time, since the arrival of plastics.'
The talk about Ikea is great - contrasting retail styles of low-cost against value-for-money. Dixon sticks up for Ikea's method ('joy through pain'), but I think it's telling when the local store starts advertising like this:
Does Ikea have the same reputation all over the world? I don't know, but us Brits don't get online ordering, mainly I think because it would be too popular.
The promise is more tills and no queues. Hold them to it.
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