Developed after research carried out by IKEA and NASA’s Mars Desert Research Station, the Rumtid is perhaps IKEA’s most ambitious project yet, to design inspired by extreme scenarios and the fragility associated with it, and designed for frugal living.

The Rumtid collection comprises four different product ranges that explore different issues: time, space, water and air, and is based on research carried out by the two teams to “explore the future needs of urban, small space living”.

The collections debuted at Democratic Design Days showcase things like a small, redesigned air purifier, a rather futuristic looking terrarium pod, innovative lighting solutions, and a modular, block-based furniture system that allows you to build furniture from scratch to suit your needs and requirements, resulting in not only a product that is tailor-made to your scenario and needs, but also efficient utilization and recycling of material because furniture parts can be interchanged, and furniture itself can be pulled apart and put together to form something new. “By cutting the tubes into different lengths and clamping them together we can build just about anything, be it sofas, wardrobes, beds, or something else completely,” added creative Michael Nikolic, who led a group of seven designers for the project.

The entire collection should debut by 2020 across all IKEA stores.

Designers: IKEA and NASA