IKEA Is Releasing An Inspirational New Book This Spring
If you’re looking for an inspirational page-turner to add to your TBR pile this year, look no further than IKEA‘s new release, set to hit shelves in spring. The Swedish retailer and Phaidon have teamed up to bring Us & Our Planet: This is How We Live, a thought-provoking read that explores the greatest challenge of our generation—living sustainably—through case studies on a diverse group of individuals and families around the world.
The book visits 12 different homes, workplaces, and shared spaces around the globe, from Mexico to Moscow and Bali to Beirut, to reveal how people can live with environmental issues in mind. Shining a light on even the smallest things we can do to make our world a little better, Us & Our Planet hopes to motivate readers into taking action today to help improve our future.
Structured into six thematic chapters—Time, Space, Food, Rest, Play, and Togetherness—each section features three notable IKEA designs, two case studies, and one photo essay by a photographer who has interpreted the theme of the chapter.
Case studies, known as “Life Visits” in the book, include Elora Hardy, an architect living in Bali, where she creates sustainable structures in bamboo; Ridhma Pandey, a fourteen-year-old Indian activist; Ron Finley, the Los Angeles based gardener who converts neglected roadside areas in low-income neighborhoods into plant flower and vegetable community gardens; the Leven family, a young couple with a child living in a small apartment near Moscow; and more.
Us & Our Planet also highlights some of IKEA’s most iconic products over the past 70 years, all with sustainability in mind. Today, IKEA is rethinking its own consumption and adopting new ways of working.
In 2018 at the annual Democratic Design Days Summit, the retailer announced its plans to embrace a “planet positive” approach, making it easier for consumers to reduce their climate impact by 2030. Key commitments include achieving zero emissions home deliveries by 2025, designing all IKEA products with new circular principles, with the goal to only use renewable and recycled materials, and becoming climate positive and reducing the total IKEA climate footprint by an average of 70% per product.
Us & Our Planet: This is How We Live will be released on Mar. 2, 2022, and is available to pre-order now.