Space10 Uses AI To Re-Imagine IKEA Furniture

In just a few short months, generative AI platforms have taken the world by storm, leading a technological and design revolution that promises new ways of creating.

In a new project, IKEA’s research and design lab SPACE10 worked with video journalist Joss Fong and designer Áron Filkey to imagine a new speculative line of IKEA furniture through the use of AI, drawing on the style of past IKEA catalogs. By teaching a text-to-image model of what IKEA furniture looked like in the 1970s and 1980s, the project allows for a unique collaboration with designers from the past to imagine new, vintage-inspired items for the future.

How:

Fong and Filkey created two image datasets: one containing IKEA catalog photos from the 1970s, and one containing IKEA catalog photos from the 1980s. Using DreamBooth, they “fine-tuned” the open-source Stable Diffusion image-generation model. The result was two new models that each learned a keyword representing the respective datasets.

The project shows how keywords can be used creatively in the prompts given to AI to generate new furniture designs and home interiors influenced by vintage IKEA catalogs.

‘With custom models, such as the ones we have made using IKEA catalogs, you create a generative environment that was personally curated from the start. This means you won’t create something similar to other people using AI. We’ll always need human expertise to decide what to build, but AI can help designers brainstorm many more initial directions than they would otherwise.’

— Joss Fong, Video Journalist

The interface for Stable Diffusion also allows users to upload an initial image, like a simple sketch of a sofa, that the custom models can complete. More abstract attributes like colors, forms, and objects seen in vintage photos are also captured using the fine-tuning process.

‘At this stage, these image generation models contain no understanding of the requirements that it takes to build; from identifying materials to manufacturing methods, or even basic physics. The human eye is required to select and curate the countless sketches surfaced by the machine. AI creates a more robust offering in concept development, but craft and expertise are needed to identify the most viable products.’

— Georgina McDonald, Creative & Partnerships, SPACE10

The furniture designs can be seen in the newly released short film, Creativity in the Age of AI, created for SPACE10 by Joss Fong and Áron Filkey, using AI models. The video travels back through history to understand how the adoption and adaptation of tech innovations have improved everyday life. It also explores AI’s growing role in the creative process, and what the history of creative tools can teach us about the future.

Visual by Joss Fong and Áron Filkey