The Fold, by Ori

Älmhult, Sweden —

More and more people are living and moving into cities where approximately an extra 1.5 million people join the urban population every week. This mass urbanisation is accelerating and creates heavily populated cities that are at the same time consuming both land and resources at an unsustainable pace. IKEA wants to create a better everyday life for the many people, enabling them to create their dream homes in small spaces. In order to do this, IKEA had to answer the question: How can you utilise the square meters of your home in a better way without compromising on either function or your dreams?

“We have been working with developing small space living solutions for a long time, and we know that some of the biggest challenges in peoples’ homes are storage and finding the place to do all the activities that you’d want to do in your home. This is especially the case in big cities where people have to make compromises in the functions of their homes. We wanted to change that,” said Seana Strawn, Product developer for new innovations at IKEA of Sweden.

To meet this need, IKEA is collaborating with Ori, an American startup that has developed robotic furniture for modern living and has been challenging the limitations of square metres in living spaces – now introducing ROGNAN. With ROGNAN as a robotic furniture solution for small space living, people will be able to turn small spaces into smart spaces that have all the comfort and convenience of a home.

“People across the US have been living large in a small footprint with Ori’s robotic interiors since we introduced our first commercial product two years ago. At about the same time, we began working with IKEA to bring robotic furniture to the world. We share IKEA’s passion to enable people to make the most of their living spaces, and look forward to helping realize this as we continue to develop living spaces for the next generation,” said Hasier Larrea, founder and CEO of Ori.

ROGNAN is built on Ori’s robotic platform with system thinking in mind, working with the IKEA storage solution PLATSA as a standard geometry. This means that people can easily change the function and look of ROGNAN, or move PLATSA to another place if that’s needed, being more conscious and less wasteful of what you buy by prolonging the life of the product and letting the product adapt to your life changes.