Simply Wood : The Kinship of Care

Abstract: Simply Wood is a collaborative inquiry into the topic of all wood joints for industrially produced furniture through engineering and the culture of care for and with furniture through Design+Change. This thesis is written in collaboration with the product development and communication wings from IKEA of Sweden, as the external tutors and supervisors. The design part, called the Kinship of Care, focuses on the culture of care between IKEA’s fast furniture and its user. This research, Kinship of care, consists of slow design principles reveal, expand, and reflect that serve as a cyclic timeline through the design process. Reader, the new caregiver is at the beginning introduced into the field of Slow Design and what does it mean to be the agent of change in today’s world. As the thesis unfolds, the section Reveal expresses challenges IKEA is facing when it comes to the culture of care. These challenges serve as a foundation from which this thesis builds its shape. The notion of care is highly abundant in meanings, and the understanding of furniture is quite narrow and static. The sectionReveal reframes the idea of care in collaboration with other caregivers in the form of a Caregiver manifesto for Living in Times of Social Distancing. The notion of furniture is revalued during an intervention walk Beyond Furniture that reveals hidden connections to furniture in the forest. Once the concepts of furniture and care are reframed, they are brought together and reimagined in the next section Expand. Expand uses tools of bisociation to combine seemingly unrelated notions together. All this information is transformed in conclusion into seeds for caring with furniture that serves as carative guidelines, guidelines that motivate caregiving behaviour in one’s household, and guidelines for imagining caring furniture. In the last section Reflect, the reader contemplates the life of furniture and learns to let go for sustainable disposal practices through the Love and the Breakup letters. This section also contains an interview with a caregiving practitioner, a furniture upholsterer. In conclusion, seeds for caring with furniture are introduced in the form of a moving zine. This thesis, Simply Wood, encourages the reader, fast-furniture user, and fast-furniture producer, to become a slow caregiver in this fast-changing society and offers tools for re-conceptualizing rooted notions of care and furniture.