See Inside IKEA's First Manhattan Store (It's VERY Different Than All the Others)
It's been more than four months since IKEA first announced its plans for a Manhattan location, and now, it's finally here. IKEA Planning Studio, the first Manhattan location of the store, officially opened on April 15, and let's just say it's very different than the blue-and-yellow shop we're used to.
First of all, you can't take anything home from this IKEA (no, not even a beloved TEKLA dish towel). Or, as Amy Singer, IKEA's communication and interior design manager told me, "there’s nothing to take out of here unless you’re shoplifting." That's because the Planning Studio is a new kind of IKEA, centered around developing solutions for city living through design.
IKEA bills the planning studio as "co-created with New Yorkers," and that's not just some marketing lingo. You may or may not know that, in addition to research through surveys, the retailer continually carries out home visits, where representatives from IKEA actually go into customers' homes to see how they interact with their spaces. Over the past few years, they've focused on the New York area, where-in what will come as little surprise to New Yorkers-space and function are key.
"I did so many visits where shoes were lined up the stairs or skis in the hall, a bike chained to the fence," laughs IKEA interior design manager Nancy Vayo. So, it comes as little surprise that the planning studio is geared, first and foremost, towards helping you make better use of your small space.
After visitors to the store walk by the ground floor's mock-up room plans (which are cheekily designed to look like architectural plans come to life, complete with a grid paper background and pen markups), they walk up to the second floor, which features an array of displays.
First, there are several mocked-up apartments drawn from real NYC floor plans-and they're as idiosyncratic as you can imagine: Bathtub in the living room, no walls, odd windows, you name it. In each of these spaces, the IKEA team has imagined a resident (or residents) and designed for them using IKEA products. A touchpad in each room tells the backstory of the homeowners (or renters!) and outlines the products used in"their" spaces.
At one end of the store is a section that focuses on kitchens, presenting several vignettes along with a wall of cabinet options and a station for a design consultation. On the other side of the floor is a similar setup for storage solutions.
In between these styled vignettes are various examples of IKEA's many modular furniture and storage solutions, used in a variety of different ways to inspire creative problem solving. Of course, each is styled in IKEA's modern, Scandinavian aesthetic.
Meanwhile, in the below ground level of the space (once at Urban Outfitters), connected with raw wood staircases, is an area for more in-depth planning. Customers can book an appointment online for a free consultation with an IKEA coworker, who they'll meet in one of the semi-private or private areas in the lower level, surrounded by options for IKEA's PAX, BESTA, and kitchen systems.
The Planning Studio is the first of its kind, ever, but likely not the last. This model is the beginning of a plan to roll out 30 different types of IKEA "touchpoints" in city centers. These will likely all be geared toward the needs of their specific cities and focus more on space planning than impulse buying.
Even if you can't shop the space per se, it may still be an inspiration-or even respite-for design lovers in midtown. As site manager Dan Desai says, "we wanted to bring people from the hustle and bustle inside to a calm experience here."
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