Objects meant not for a pedestal but for use
Once every decade or so, a brand pauses long enough to ask whether its founding ideals still hold — and IKEA's return to Milan after 31 years with the tenth edition of its PS collection suggests the answer is yes, if the question is asked honestly. Born in 1995 from a challenge to reclaim Scandinavian simplicity at a democratic price, the PS collection has always treated accessibility and beauty as the same ambition rather than competing ones. This year, that ambition arrived not through a showroom but through food, cooking, and shared domestic ritual — a reminder that design, at its most meaningful, is simply the shape given to how we live together.
- After 31 years away, IKEA's most philosophically charged collection returns to Milan with the weight of a brand trying to prove its founding ideals still have teeth.
- The Food for Thought installation at Spazio Maiocchi turns the product launch inside out — five designer-chef duos build entire rooms and menus around a single domestic moment, making the visitor the subject of the design experiment.
- Three new PS pieces — an inflatable chair, a pine rocking bench, a three-directional floor lamp — carry the tension between restraint and personality that has defined the collection since its ironic, postscript-named debut.
- Sustainability is woven in rather than bolted on: anti-food-waste Surprise Bags, AI-powered smart bins, upcycled textiles, and a farmers' market collectively test whether a design event can model the circular economy it talks about.
- The exhibition lands as a multisensory argument that democratic design is not a price strategy but a conviction — one that apparently still needs making, thirty years on.
Milan Design Week has long been IKEA's preferred stage for thinking out loud, and this year the brand arrived with Food for Thought — an immersive installation at Spazio Maiocchi conceived by architect Midori Hasuike and studio Emerzon. Five designer-chef duos from around the world were each asked to translate a moment of everyday domestic life into both a fully realized room and an original menu. Cooking, eating, and sharing became the medium through which IKEA's idea of democratic design was made tangible and sensory rather than merely visual.
The installation also served as the launchpad for the tenth edition of IKEA PS — a collection with a deliberate origin story. By the late 1980s, IKEA's identity had grown diffuse. Stefan Ytterborn, a Stockholm design entrepreneur, posed a pointed question to IKEA's then-head of design: shouldn't a company rooted in Scandinavian principles be part of the minimalist conversation reshaping the era? The challenge led to a collaboration with eighteen young designers and a debut at the 1995 Salone del Mobile under the banner of Democratic Design — the name PS itself a quiet Scandinavian joke, a postscript to the standard range.
Thirty years on, the tenth edition channels that founding spirit through what IKEA calls playful functionality. Three new pieces offer the first glimpse: an inflatable easy chair, a solid pine rocking bench, and a three-directional floor lamp — distinct in form yet unified by a sensibility that is considered, joyful, and unafraid of personality. Creative Leader Maria O'Brian described the ambition plainly: to push Scandinavian design forward through expressive simplicity, always in service of the many.
The exhibition extended well beyond the objects themselves. Partnerships with anti-food-waste app Too Good To Go and Italian AI-waste startup Etrash embedded circular economy thinking into the daily rhythm of the space. A courtyard market featured upcycled IKEA fabrics, a Coldiretti farmers' market, and a Hot Dog Extravaganza with chef-created daily toppings — including, in an unexpected turn, a meatball lollipop developed with Chupa Chups. Visitors concluded at the BILLY Café, a library-inspired corner stocked with Phaidon cookbooks, offering a moment of stillness inside the week's relentless energy.
Milan Design Week has become IKEA's preferred venue for stepping beyond the typical showroom experience, and this year the brand returned with an ambitious installation called Food for Thought, housed at Spazio Maiocchi in the Porta Venezia district. The project, conceived by architect Midori Hasuike and spatial design studio Emerzon, brought together five pairs of designers and chefs from around the world. Each duo was asked to translate a moment of everyday domestic life into both a fully realized room and an original menu. What emerged was a participatory space where the acts of cooking, eating, and sharing became as much a design conversation as a visual one—a place to experience what IKEA calls democratic design through all the senses.
But the installation served a larger purpose: it became the launchpad for the tenth edition of IKEA PS, a collection that has defined the brand's design identity for more than three decades. The return to Milan after 31 years carries particular weight. The PS collection itself has a deliberate origin story. By the late 1980s, IKEA's range had grown unwieldy and its identity diluted. The stock market crash of 1987 coincided with a broader cultural turn toward minimalism, and Scandinavian designers were producing restrained work in light woods that felt distinctly of the region. Stefan Ytterborn, a Stockholm-based design entrepreneur, posed a direct question to Lennart Ekmark, then head of design at IKEA: shouldn't a company rooted in Scandinavian design be part of this conversation?
That challenge sparked a collaboration. Ytterborn and Ekmark assembled eighteen young Scandinavian designers and gave them a clear mandate: reclaim the company's roots, distill the essence of Scandinavian simplicity, and do it at a price point faithful to IKEA's founding principles. The collection that resulted launched at the 1995 Salone del Mobile under the banner of Democratic Design—a term that captured the idea that good form, honest function, and accessibility were not competing values but complementary ones. The name itself carried quiet wit: PS, as in postscript, an addendum to the standard range—a distinctly Scandinavian nod to irony.
The debut succeeded critically, and the format proved durable. Over the decades, IKEA PS returned at irregular intervals, each edition shaped by a new theme and a new generation of designers, both Scandinavian and international. Collections explored multifunctionality, sustainable materials, urban mobility, and independent living. Yet each remained tethered to the same underlying conviction: that well-conceived design should be within everyone's reach.
Now, thirty years on, the tenth edition channels that founding spirit through what IKEA describes as playful functionality—an approach that pairs practical purpose with expressive, unexpected details. Three pieces offer the first glimpse: an inflatable easy chair, a solid pine rocking bench, and a three-directional floor lamp. They are distinct in form and material, yet they share a sensibility that is at once considered and joyful, grounded in utility yet unafraid of personality. Maria O'Brian, Creative Leader at IKEA of Sweden, framed the collection as an effort to push Scandinavian design forward through expressive simplicity, always grounded in one ambition: to make bold and forward-thinking design accessible to the many.
The choice to preview the collection within Food for Thought was deliberate. Play and food run as parallel threads through the entire exhibition, both treated as languages through which design can engage with the rhythms of everyday domestic life across cultures, generations, and living situations. The three new PS pieces feel entirely at home in this context—objects meant not for a pedestal but for use.
Beyond the product launches, Food for Thought also reflected IKEA's broader commitments to sustainable living. In partnership with Too Good To Go, an anti-food-waste app active in fifteen countries since 2018, visitors could purchase Surprise Bags filled with unsold food at the end of each day. The exhibition also featured Etrash, an Italian startup developing AI-powered smart bins designed to support more effective waste sorting. The courtyard extended the experience outdoors with a saluhall-inspired market featuring a Campagna Amica farmers' market by Coldiretti and upcycled pieces crafted from IKEA fabrics by PRISM, an Italian benefit company specializing in socially inclusive textile production. At the Food kiosk, the Hot Dog Extravaganza returned with daily toppings created by the resident chefs, including a fish finger hot dog and, in an unexpected turn, a meatball lollipop developed in partnership with Chupa Chups. The visit concluded at the BILLY Café, a library-inspired space where a curated selection of Phaidon cookbooks offered a moment of quiet reflection amid the bustle of Design Week.
Citações Notáveis
IKEA PS 2026 is about pushing Scandinavian design forward through playful, expressive simplicity, always grounded in one ambition: to make bold and forward-thinking design accessible to the many.— Maria O'Brian, Creative Leader at IKEA of Sweden
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does IKEA keep coming back to Milan for these moments? What makes this city different from anywhere else?
Milan is where design gets taken seriously as a language, not just as decoration. It's where the industry gathers to ask what design can do next. For IKEA, it's the one place where stepping outside the showroom feels like a statement rather than a stunt.
The PS collection started as a postscript—an addendum. How does something marginal become the thing that defines you?
Because it answered a real question at the right moment. In the late eighties, IKEA had lost its way. PS was a way of saying: we remember who we are. And that clarity resonated. Thirty years later, they're still using the same framework.
Playful functionality—that's a phrase that could mean almost anything. What does it actually mean here?
It means the objects aren't apologizing for being useful. An inflatable chair isn't pretending to be art. A rocking bench isn't hiding its purpose. But they're also not boring. There's personality in them, even joy. That's the balance.
Why pair a furniture collection with a food installation? Those seem like different conversations.
They're not, though. Both are about how people actually live. Food and furniture are the two things that structure a home. If you're going to talk about democratic design, you have to talk about both. And you have to let people experience it, not just look at it.
The sustainability angle—Too Good To Go, Etrash, the upcycled textiles. Does that feel like genuine commitment or like greenwashing?
It feels integrated into the actual experience rather than bolted on. The waste-reduction partnerships aren't separate from the exhibition; they're part of how the space functions. That's a different thing than a sustainability statement on a wall.