The sustainable heaviness of hacking Ikea

An aspiring freelance designer tries his hand at Ikea with surprising results. Alex's personal project called "S.p.A. - L'insostenibile pesantezza dell'avere" focuses on recycling and reusing objects made by 2nd (3rd or even 4th) hand material mixed with original Ikea elements.

I am loving his Alvaro stool - inspired by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto's famous stacking stool and its faithful replica Ikea Frosta. Alex's version uses the Vika Oleby legs and a salvaged seat.



There are more on his site, including a coffee table, lamp stand and chairs. All his designs are under Creative Commons License (3.0 non commercial) which means you can take his ideas for free and recreate them.

A little bit more about S.p.A
Alex explains, "The name "S.p.A." is an acronym of the Italian sentence "la Sostenibile Pesantezza dell'Avere" which means the exact opposite of the sentence "l'insostenibile leggerezza dell'essere" that is the title of Milan Kundera's book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". In Italian that makes a funny word-game which - in the end - means "the sustainable heaviness of having."

Curious enough? Click to visit Alex's S.p.A project (in Italian) or the Google translated version in English.