Ikea wants to build you a house. Not a pine bookcase, not a nice little side table, not a quirkily colourful kitchen implement -- an entire house. The Swedish furniture company is building and renting out an entire neighbourhood of homes in London.
No, really. The Ikea neighbourhood -- Ikeahood? Ikeatown? -- is to be located in east London, near the Olympic site. It will be named Strand East and filled with families and leafy pedestrian boulevards.
The 11-hectare site will be criss-crossed by car-free streets, lined with five-storey townhouses, each backed by a mews of two-storey homes and a couple of 11-storey apartment blocks. There'll be 1,200 homes in total, nearly half of which are aimed at families, and all of which are for rental.
Offices and hotels round out the development, with a riverside park and communal courtyard gardens for when the weather's suitably balmy. Betting shops and other such unpleasantness will be banned. Whether newsagents will only be allowed to stock The Guardian and Wired is unknown as yet.
Strand East will be built in 2013 amid the decrepit canals and derelict docklands of East London, not far from the area taken over by the fast-approaching Olympics. Cars will be hidden away in an underground car park, and it'll be powered by a hydroelectric plant, with waste carried away by underground suction tunnels.
Now, I used to live in Stratford, and while I can confirm it is technically East of the Strand, the name is a bit on the misleading side. It does sound nice, if bland -- although I like the sound of a hydroelectric plant and suction tunnels. Would you live in an Ikea house? Furnish me with your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.
Building. Ikea. Rabbit. Oh, that's typical -- you get to the end and there's always a few bits left over.
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Comments 6
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Pizzaman 11 April, 2012 18:02
There'll be so many clever little storage ideas you won't actually be able to find the darn thing once you've put it away.. :)
Ross SuBo Coulter 11 April, 2012 19:13
I quite like this idea, especially if the hydro plant is self contained within the development. The underground is a feature in a lot of new build's in Edinburgh, but they're often poorly conceived a leave a criss cross of walkways and dark stair wells in a middle of a courtyard of flats- others have the area completey flat acting as a garden.
I'd be worried about a hum of the suction pipes, my ears seem to be quite sensitive these days. Even the noise of the gas stove (designed to give a high pitch noise when on) annoys the hell out of me.
fleabane 12 April, 2012 15:55
Hydroelectric plant? Are they planning on putting a dam across the Thames then?
Tessa Lawrence 12 April, 2012 16:21
If it's an Ikea product, surely it should have an incomprehensible and unpronounceable name. Strndo, perhaps? Also, there will only be one path, designed to take you in a wiggly line that goes past every building in the development -- eventually.
On the other hand, I expect it'll be well designed and good value.
anonymous 13 April, 2012 11:09
All sounds lovely, except that when you arrive, you won't actually find a house, instead you'll find a large pile of bricks and an enormous and incomprehensible instruction manual. When you finish, there will inevitably be several unidentifiable parts left over
anonymous 13 April, 2012 14:13
I first saw this on April 1st. Assumed it was a April fools joke.