Second-hand furniture becomes works of art in Ikea's Circular Exhibition

At BASE, until December 17, IKEA presents the Circular Exhibition, at the same time an artistic exhibition and an experiential path in collaboration with the creative hub BASE Milano to learn about the world of circularity and find out how to minimize waste. Nine designers have created works by reinterpreting and reusing objects recovered from IKEA's circular hubs - shops dedicated to the sale and purchase of second-hand furniture - using the scraps to create something new and creative. The works on display, second-hand furniture yesterday, today works of art, make up the IKEA Circular Collection to underline the importance of reuse to help our planet and future generations.

The works on display bear the signature of the artists Matteo Guarnaccia, Andrea de Chirico, of the collective The Ladies Room and Parasite 2.0, as well as that of the students of the Brera Academy, protagonists of a live workshop during which they transformed used furniture into new ready-made objects for use. In the Circular Hubs, Ikea offers a wide range of reclaimed and second-hand products at even more affordable prices, like furniture recovered from the exhibition or returned by other customers that have not lost their usefulness yet, and shares information on how to repair and recover old furniture and collaborates with local communities to spread concepts such as sustainability and circularity. With this exhibition in particular, the Swedish company supports Legambiente, a non-profit association that has been organizing itinerant environmental quality monitoring campaigns along the coasts and in Italian cities for over forty years, committing itself daily to environmental protection. Through an online auction, carried out in collaboration with CharityStars, it will be possible to purchase each of the unique pieces of the IKEA Circular Collection. “Our goal is to inspire and above all enable more than 1 billion people to live a more sustainable life starting from their home” - explains Fides Tosoni, business Development Manager of IKEA Italy.

Circular Exhibition arises in the wake of initiatives aimed at sustainability promoted by Ikea, which since 2009 declared that it wanted to draw only on clean energy (solar and wind) to power stores and productions. Upcycling, recycling, DIY craftsmanship and creativity meet the zero waste philosophy, the circular economy model that provides for the reuse of resources by reducing or eliminating the amount of waste, giving a new function or a different use to existing objects. A trend that unites the new generations of #fridaysforfuture, as well as a lifestyle that Gen Z shares on all social networks, creating communities around the sharing of finding new creative ways to reduce waste to a minimum, so much so that on Tik Tok the hashtag #nowaste has 146 million views while #waste 445 million.