TARGET 150909

A HOUSE IN THE SUB(way)URBS

A house in the suburbs is a great thing, but what if the suburbs is the subway? Even worse, what if it is a busy subway station in Paris, where the city never sleeps and there are people walking around your house 24 hours a day, looking into the windows and watching everything you do? Well, this "home" was the living place for five people, working five days and nights for IKEA Corporation, demonstrating some of the great things that IKEA sells for the home.



The house was built for maximum observation by the people passing through the station. There were picture windows on all sides, and even signs on the outside, inviting people to pause and watch to see how comfortable and easy the living conditions could be, if only they would buy all their furnishings from IKEA.

This bizarre business promotional strategy was a bid to prove that with IKEA furnishing you can make any living space comfortable. So, the company erected an apartment right in the middle of the Auber subway station in Paris.

And for five days and nights, the five people who lived in this house went on about their daily activities...



...ate and drank their meals...



...and slept, all under the watchful eyes of passers-by.



The house was only 581 sq ft. in size and the five people lived in it for five days (Jan 9th to 14th, 2012). The apartment mainly consisted of IKEA storage products, clearly aiming at space management. Plain to view through huge clear-glass windows for the hundreds of thousands of people who use the subway, their publicity stunt sure didn’t miss anyone's attention. It was even on the news and may have attracted some sightseers who didn't even want to go anywhere on the subway. In order to take even more advantage of the advertising stunt, IKEA has made available time-lapse videos of the house being built, as well as videos of the people going about their daily lives in the house. The videos show the five inhabitants going through their daily activities, sleeping, washing up, shaving, working out and even going for a run through the subway platforms. Some of them are eating, sewing on IKEA sewing machines, and have visitors come over and plop on the huge couches that turn into beds at night. It actually doesn’t look like such a bad way to live, but somehow, the house-hunter's phrase of "location, location, location" does come to mind.

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If you got impressions for which this feedback is insufficient, more information,
pictures and videos can be found at the following web sites:

Oddity Central
YouTube (One and a half minute video of the house being built)
Business Insider
Design Taxi (More internal pictures & detailed info & stats)