Sofa - bed: Tom Dixon X Ikea

All those fashion shows to review, we need a lie down.  Or at least somewhere to sit.

The answer could come in the form of the DELAKTIG - the result of a collaboration between British enfant terrible designer Tom Dixon and the world’s biggest furniture company Ikea.

Described as a durable, transformable platform for living – DELAKTIG was launched in Milan a couple of weeks’ ago.  It is a sofa that also functions as a bed.  

According to Tom Dixon, the bed is the most important furniture we need in our life.  As many of us now work from home, we can certainly relate to that.  More often than ever, we bring our work into our bed with us, sitting up at odd hours to pour through our emails and social media platforms using our electronic devices to communicate with colleagues, clients, loved ones, friends, contacts in different parts of the world.

Tom Dixon has come up with the concept of making the bed work harder for us as to him it is the only indispensable piece of furniture, the primary unit of home furnishing.

Together with IKEA, Tom decided to create a super-durable aluminium frame that could be constantly updated or upgraded as your life and needs evolve.   At its most basic, DELAKTIG is a single bed - rapidly transformable into a chaise lounge or a three seat sofa by adding additional components.

Contributing to a global community of IKEA hackers that already edit and modify IKEA designs for every-day life, Tom and IKEA began work with the world’s most innovative art schools to see if DELAKTIG, rather than being a complete finished piece of furniture, could be the start of something much bigger - a kind of ecosystem with unlimited possibilities. The results were diverse and inspiring.

In response, Tom Dixon has created heavy-weight task lamps, coffee tables and magazine racks that can be clamped, slotted or bolted on at will, to mutate the sofa into a work or entertainment space. Made of substantial and durable aluminium plate the hacks are robust enough to last a lifetime.

Tom Dixon also collaborated with Bemz who specialize in soft hacks to produce three luxe covers that elevate the IKEA frame into a luxury unit – from Shower-proof stripes to an Icelandic sheepskin mono-cover known as ‘The Beast’.

So, this is the plan - you can go to IKEA and you can buy yourself a bed. If you want, you can add components to make it into a sofa. Once you’ve got this bed sofa you can add on Tom's hacks, other people’s hacks, or you can hack it yourself.    Presently, the hacks are available from tomdixon.net in the UK and Europe only.