This week, IKEA's founder passed away and MIPIM was criticised
Posted in: UncategorizedThis week on Dezeen, Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Swedish furniture company IKEA died aged 91 and MIPIM organisers were attacked for their soft approach to alleged sexual misconduct at the event.
Tributes poured in following the death of IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad this week, with the company calling him “one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century” on their Instagram page.
Dezeen marked the news by taking a look back at some of the brand’s key furniture designs under Kamprad’s watch, as well as 10 of their most game-changing ideas and innovations.
Also this week, the Financial Times’ exposure of sexual harassment at a Presidents Club dinner led to criticism of property event MIPIM – after it was revealed a large number of the industry’s senior figures attended.
Reports of prostitution, sexual harassment and discrimination at previous MIPIM events resurfaced, leading to RIBA president Ben Derbyshire warning any attending architects to adhere to the body’s code of conduct.
An Architects’ Journal’s survey revealed that the number of architects who are openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender in British practices had fallen over the past two years, with homophobic and transphobic slurs in the workplace also on the rise.
Plastic was in the headlines this week, as the winners of a $1 million prize to develop plastic alternatives were announced at World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, while The New Circular Design Guide was also launched at the event.
Meanwhile, a group of sustainably minded designers discussed the importance of using recycled plastic with Dezeen, amid growing concerns of global pollution.
Dutch firm MVRDV was also featured on Dezeen heavily this week, as they unveiled renderings for a mirrored office block in Germany and a collaborative scheme with Hassell to combat flooding in San Francisco.
In other architecture news, retail giant Amazon completed a set of glass orbs filled with gardens for their Seattle headquarters and designs for the first Serpentine Pavilion to be built outside of the UK were also released.
It was announced that the regenerated brutalist Park Hill estate in Sheffield is to be converted into student housing by local practice Whittam Cox Architects.
In other UK news, BBC arts editor Will Gompertz attacked the British education system for teaching children to “regurgitate information” like computers, rather than designers.
Popular projects on Dezeen this week included IKEA and Tom Dixon’s modular bed, a mountain cabin in Norway clad in contrasting materials and a tiny 15-square-metre roof apartment in Beirut.
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