Hack-your-IKEA has two winners

WINNER: ASTRID hack by Lisette Haasnoot (NL):
"You buy an ASTRID at IKEA and pay at the cash register. Then you take the lamp out of its box and return the lamp without box at the customer service desk to get your money back. Now you have a free (!!) and very pretty - not yet functioning - lamp.
To make it into a functioning lamp you need two cardboard partitions (which you also get at IKEA for free), which you crosswise slide into each other.
In the middle of this partition you cut a space in which to fit a light bulb and socket. You also cut parts of the box out according to the required light intensity. After that it is just a case of putting the different parts together."

Lisette Haasnoot studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

The opinion of the jury according to Scott Burnham: "We focused on two areas of hacking culture when judging the entries. The first is what I refer to as a 'soft' hack - where a system or process is hacked by a suggested alteration of the way you interact with Ikea. There were several exceptional entries in this category where people used Ikea as a workout area, or as the potential supplier of composting materials. The winner in this area was of course the ASTRID hack. This was just a brilliant hack of the entire IKEA packaging, returns and branding system. Now that this hack will get a lot of attention and more people are bound to try and make it themselves, I bet IKEA will quickly switch to a transparent plastic packaging for this lamp."

ERIK! the elk - Nora Feddersen, Photo by H. Velten
ERIK! the elk - Nora Feddersen, Photo by H. Velten

WINNER: ERIK, the elk! by Nora Feddersen (DE):
"ERIK is a clothes-hanger for children made out of an IKEA FNISS paper basket and two IKEA STATIST decoration trees.
I got rid of the basket's bottom and made a round mdf wood board with two holes and the print FEED ME! The round piece is screwed to a wall with the two holes on its rim. The basket fits exactly on top of the round mdf piece and is held by the two STATIST trees which are stuck through the holes in the basket through the holes in the wood.

ERIK is greeting kids everyday demanding to feed him with anoraks, gloves and scarves."

Nora Feddersen studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

Burnham: "The other area we focused on was the straight-up design hack. Personally, I wanted to keep things pure, in that only IKEA products were used in order to create a different, unique 'third' product. So IKEA Product A + Product B = new Product C. For this ERIK! the elk was the winner because not only is it a brilliant hack using existing IKEA products, but its end result looks exactly like an IKEA product and it is hard to believe they haven't already made this. If they were smart, the next step would be to hire this hacker and add ERIK to their product line!"

PAX AEternus 1 - Peter Schippers
PAX AEternus 2 - Peter Schippers

HONOROUBLE MENTION: PAX AETERNUS coffin by Peter Schippers (NL)
"In this regard I also think the PAX AETERNUS coffin by Peter Schippers deserves an honourable mention for not only being a nice design hack using existing materials, but an entirely unexpected entry as well - refreshing and original", says Burnham.

"I and the rest of the jury were incredibly impressed by the quality of all the entries. The most remarkable thing about it was how such a simple concept of Hacking Ikea spawned such a wide range of design responses, and such a vast number of entries. It was easily the most entertaining competition I've ever judged, and one of the most innovative as well."

The winners of the contest win design fame. Their hacks will be exhibited in the stand of BRIGHT during the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in October. Also they will travel with the Hacking IKEA exhibition to the design_MADE 2008 exhibition in Seoul and the 2009 Montreal Biennale in Canada in May of next year.