When furniture is purchased, it is hard to predict how a home will be used after a year or how the sofa will be used in a new room. We may change the turn a terrace into a seating area, and a child may outgrow their bed; these situations seem like simple daily issues, but they show how much fixed furniture can limit the way people arrange their homes. Andreas Fredriksson’s designs highlight these situations and then find a way to give people more opportunities and options for more practical use of their spaces. Andreas Fredriksson was born in Sweden in 1972, he worked as a cabinet maker before joining IKEA as a furniture designer in 2011 (IKEA, 2020) (IKEA of Sweden, n.d.). He became famous for designing flexible, minimalist furniture that fits modern spaces Image 1
The two-function sofa
HAVSTEN Sofa Image 2 started when IKEA noticed an issue with the regular sofa function: some people want to feel comfortable using their terraces and gardens, but comfortable exterior sofas have a large size and heavy weight; that’s why Andreas Fredriksson designed the HAVSTEN Sofa, which can be used inside and outside the house. This sofa relies on a lightweight steel-tube frame topped by a mesh to support the cushions. Reaching a comfortable sofa design is not supposed to be a heavy, massive block. Thinking didn’t stop at the seating experience; it extended to solving shipping and weight, so he divided the sofa into parts that can be used individually or grouped; these parts are designed to be stored in a flat Package to get easy shipping from the store. (IKEA Museum, n.d.)
HAVSTEN’s design is not only to make the user experience easy, but also to allow residents to rearrange pieces and change the order to fit any room and any number of people; people who own a small space can use one or two seats and can add more seats if needed, and changing the sofa location from inside to outside does not require buying two different sofas (IKEA Museum, n.d.). This feature is important for people who care about their exterior seating areas. These facilities reduce limitations caused by rigid furniture blocks. Instead of the seating arrangement remaining dictated by the dimensions of a single fixed sofa, users have more flexibility to adapt it to any room under any condition.
What remains inside the box
All parents know this scene; LEGO pieces are spread all over the floor, and a child refuses to collect them because he did not finish the building he wanted to construct. Andreas Fredriksson highlights this conflict with the help of Rasmus Buch Løgstrup, a LEGO designer developing the BYGGLEK box. Image 3 Their target was not to design a toy box, but to understand what happens to the toy when it is lifted from the ground. Andreas recalled his childhood memory of gathering toys in a blanket, and searching through them was part of the fun. The design team tried many prototypes for the design, from cardboard, to understand how the box itself can be a part of the LEGO construction process; the solution was to attach LEGO pieces to a box, allowing the child to use its surface as part of their game and store other pieces inside. (IKEA, 2020)
BYGGLEK helps Andreas to explain he difference between putting toys away and ending a game. The box allows a large floor space to be kept clean while keeping the construction process, allowing the child to go back and continue the process. It can also be a part of the scene, acting as a swimming pool, a house, or a ground for a larger scene regarding the child’s imagination (IKEA, 2020). The box is designed to be simple to allow the child to have interest in the box before the play starts. Of course, the child’s family needs to teach him how to clean his room, but this product offers a new option that was not available in a standard storage box. Here we can find common ground between child and family; the design connects two distinct needs within the home and creates a space where they can coexist.
What If Your Kitchen Could Move with You?
People live in a small unit and need a kitchen that meets their needs; Andreas refuses to waste money and effort on permanent fixtures that they would leave behind if they moved to another house. That’s why Andreas Fredriksson shared in the ÄSPINGE Image 4 design process with product designer Oskar Ponnert. ÄSPINGE is a small kitchen that arrives in a flat package; it is easy to be assembled any time if the user is changing houses. Units are designed in a vertical open structure; Fredriksson drew inspiration from scaffolding (Inter IKEA Group، 2022) It makes the best use of vertical space and offers spaces to hang tools and put the daily-use items the user needs within easy reach. He also designed drawers and shelves for things that should be placed away, so the user is not supposed to hide anything because of limited space, and it’s not required to plan for a new kitchen from scratch each time he moves; he can always find ready-made units that fit his needs.
When you read all of Andreas’s projects together, his design philosophy becomes clearer: he always designs adjustable furniture. The HAVSTEN sofa is only one side of his body of work; in the RÅDVIKEN chair, Andreas used machine-woven paper as a fabric. (IKEA of Sweden, n.d.) He also collaborated with designer Iina Vuorivirta to design the SYMFONISK table lamp, which combines a lighting source and a Wi-Fi speaker, this product won the Red Dot prize in 2019 (IKEA Museum, n.d.). This design variety shows Andreas’s interest in making the best use of the material and working with people who have different experience instead of repeating designs and shapes in each new project. Andreas Fredriksson describes curiosity as a way to explore new technologies and materials. (IKEA of Sweden, n.d.) His designs show how this curiosity turned into design decisions.
References:
IKEA Museum, n.d. HAVSTEN. [Online].
IKEA Museum, n.d. SYMFONISK. [Online].
IKEA of Sweden, n.d. Personal profile: Andreas Fredriksson. [Online].
IKEA, 2020. BYGGLEK: Create more space for play. [Online].
Inter IKEA Group, 2022. A small-space kitchen to make your own. [Online].
Image1: IKEA. (2026). Andreas Fredriksson, Akanksha Deo and Chiara Ripalti examining woven bamboo samples. [Photograph]. Available at: https://www.ikea.com/global/en/stories/design/bamboo-rebooted-varptross-lamps-260812/ [Accessed: 25 September 2026].
Image2: Inter IKEA Group. (2017). Three configurations of the HAVSTEN outdoor sofa. [Photograph]. Available at: https://www.ikea.com/global/en/newsroom/corporate/ikea-havsten-outdoor-sofa-awarded-with-the-red-dot-award-on-product-design-170403/ [Accessed: 25 September 2026].
Image3: Inter IKEA Group. (2020). BYGGLEK box incorporated into a LEGO play scene. [Photograph]. Available at: https://www.ikea.com/global/en/newsroom/collaborations/play-display-and-replay-ikea-and-the-lego-group-introduce-bygglek–a-creative-solution-that-intertwines-play-and-storage-200827/ [Accessed: 25September 2026].
Image4: Inter IKEA Group. (2022). ÄSPINGE kitchenette with open vertical storage. [Photograph]. Available at: https://www.ikea.com/global/en/stories/design/designing-a-small-space-kitchen-to-make-your-own-221212/ [Accessed: 27 September 2026]
