Furniture giant IKEA is joining the sustainability bandwagon with its Tiny Home Project – a 187-square foot, off-grid home on wheels that is “stylish, sustainable, and affordable.”
The company designed and built the tiny home in cooperation with brand studio Vox Creative after being inspired by their “shared commitments to sustainability, inclusivity and innovation.”
Their goal is for everyone to live a more sustainable existence.
“We built a sustainable tiny home from the ground up to better educate and inspire consumers to bring sustainability into their own lives,” according to the project’s website.
IKEA partnered with ESCAPE, an RV and tiny home builder, to create a custom build of the brand’s Vista Boho XL model. The dwelling featured low-impact design and was equipped with solar panels, a composting toilet and an RV water heater to enable off-grid use.
“It was a natural pairing,” ESCAPE founder Dan Dobrowolski said.
“We feature many IKEA products in our various tiny home designs around the country as they mirror the renewable, reusable, and recycled materials we incorporate into the actual structures.”
ESCAPE spent 60 days looking through all IKEA items for the home. The entire project took four months to complete, not including the time spent on building the base Vista Boho XL.
Abbey Stark, the senior interior design leader of IKEA, showcased the company’s sustainable, multifunctional, and energy-efficient products in the home’s interior.
“How I started was really listing out all the needs for the space,” she said in an Explainer Studio video.
“Like, how do you design around a wheel well and the mechanics of the home? I wanted to source renewable, reusable, and recycled materials when possible to make the space functional as well as beautiful.”
The tiny home’s interior is lined with sustainably grown pine painted white to give the dwelling a more spacious feel.
Stark believed that multifunctional furniture was essential in a home, so she filled the space with them.
The NORDEN gateleg is a table that can be placed in the middle of the structure. It doubles as a workspace, dining table and storage. It can also be folded down for storage when not in use.
The kitchen features a solid wood and veneer SKOGSA countertop made with the whole tree—including the branches and twigs—which means there was less waste involved in making it. The cupboards are made using recycled bottle tops.
Beside the kitchen is the bathroom furnished with a VILTO towel stand made from 100% renewable materials, a low-flow HAMNSKÄR faucet, and NORDRANA hanging storage crochet crafted by Vietnamese artisans under fair-trade conditions.
The walk-in shower features a water-saving BROGRUND thermostatic rainhead.
There is storage underneath the bed.
The Tiny Home Project was started by the team in late 2019, and completed in April 2020. IKEA initially planned to take their tiny home on a national tour through sustainable events across the U.S. to allow people to explore it. They had to alter their plans after the coronavirus pandemic.
In place of an actual physical tour, IKEA and Vox Creative—together with Curbed—launched a digital campaign offering an in-depth virtual walkthrough of the structure.
Aside from showcasing the home’s exterior and interior, the tour also provided viewers tips on how they can make their own homes—whether tiny or normal-sized—more environmentally friendly.
ESCAPE is accepting orders for the IKEA BOHO XL models—excluding IKEA furnishings—starting at $47,550. Additional options are also available.
Click HERE to take a virtual tour inside Ikea’s sustainable tiny home.
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