With around 5,000 entries from more than 50 countries each year, the Red Dot Award is one of the world’s largest international product competitions. All products are assessed individually by an international jury of around 40 experts.
The IKEA PS 2017 chair is designed to be comfortable for everyone who lives in small spaces. The manufacturing technique is called 3D knitting, a technique often used to make trainers, which gives the chair a light, almost transparent feel. The chair is also flat-pack, enabling IKEA to avoid shipping big, assembled products around the world.
“I'm really happy that the IKEA PS 2017 armchair won the Red Dot Award. It took about a year of design and product development, some travelling to our supplier and a lot of testing. During this work we called it "The Knitted Chair" due to the technique we were using in the back. This technique was new to us at IKEA and quite a challenge. You usually see this knitted fabric in colourful sneakers, and the benefit is that every piece is knitted in this 3D shape by a machine. This means we can really control quality and optimize production to get a reasonable price”, says Sarah Fager, Designer at IKEA of Sweden.
Another part IKEA worked hard with, was to make the package as flat as possible; less air in the box affects the price in a positive way, meaning IKEA can be more relevant to more people. Small packages also gives a more sustainable transportation.
IKEA have a goal to make great design available to the many people and that’s what we work towards everyday.
“We have a formula called Democratic Design with the ingredients form, function, quality, sustainability and price, and I think this chair lives up to all those requirements. I'm also super exited that the chair is so comfortable without using conventional methods and instead used as little material as possible”, says Sarah Fager.
The PS 2017 armchair will be presented for one year at the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen, Germany, the largest museum for contemporary design.
About Red Dot Award
Red Dot Award is one of the most respected international design competitions in the world and organized by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany. The award was founded in 1955 and receives more than 17,000 submissions each year. The prize is divided into three categories: product design, communication design and design concept.
