Standard housing makes architects’ jobs easy. It solves the need to fit more and more housing into increasingly crowded cities economically. Standard housing is known for uniformity and lack of space or comfort in its floor plans.

In Hong Kong the number of people who live in standardised homes is around 3.5 million. In Hungary, it’s 4.3 million. In Russia, however, the scale of the problem is enormous. There are about 231 standard house series in the country that were built in the soviet era without much consideration for comfort and are being occupied by about 84 million people today (around 60% of the population).  

Ikea is known for making family life livable. Its main market opportunity is making small spaces functional and giving individuality to homes on a budget. So Ikea Russia and advertising agency, Instinct, created a free interior design library tool, Apartmenteka, (Kvartiroteka in Russian) so that people could make their standardised homes more functional, comfortable and individual.

Around 2.8 million people have already used Apartmenteka since June 2019.

Ikea’s team of architects and designers worked with Instinct to develop a series of carefully considered interior design layouts that can fit typical floor plans. These design projects can be found online at the Apartmenteka website. When customers enter their home address or type of house and the size of their apartment they are offered several design options for various needs, tastes and living situations. Users can select a design project for a specific zone as well: kitchen, living room, balcony, corridor, children’s room, storage room, etc. Once all the inputs are defined, they can get a virtual tour of their upgraded apartment and check the price and details of all the featured furniture and decorating elements before they buy them online. The selected design project is also available for download.

Today Apartmenteka provides free design projects for 17 housing series, or 1.5+ million apartments with more than 4.9 million people living in them. The platform is being constantly expanded to reach more cities and neighbourhoods. Following the success of the idea, the project has become a best practice example being implemented by Ikea in Germany, Poland and China next.

Credits

Advertising Agency: Instinct, Moscow

Creative Directors: Kolya Fabrika, Yaroslav Orlov & Roman Firainer

Design Director: Maxim Demkin

Art Directors: Timur Abdyusheev & Victoria Vysotskaya

Creative Group Heads: Antonina Pirogova & Evgeny Golovan

Copywriter: Anastasia Gorenshtein

Client Service Director: Marina Vershinina

Group Account Directors: Irina Gornova & Natalia Ametova

Senior Account Manager: Kseniya Mikhailova

Project Manager: Anna Novikova

Strategic Planning Director: Anna Zakharova

Senior Digital Producers: Anna Chaplygina & Vladimir Lovtsov

Producer: Karina Mansurova