Ikea has made its plans and shop drawings for a DIY spherical garden product available on open source for free download.

The Growroom garden structure was designed by the furniture juggernaut's in-house Space10 innovation lab in conjunction with two Danish architects and, much like Ikea’s award-winning flat-pack refugee shelter, the product was conceived out of a goal to create positive social change.

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The purpose of the Growroom, says Ikea, is to assist as many people and communities as possible to grow their own food in a more sustainable and local environment. This will be benefitted by the fact that the global retailer has made the plans for the product available to download online for free, allowing anyone to build their own three-dimensional garden if they can afford the cost of materials, have access to certain tools and machinery, and the time and patience to put one together.

Growroom designers Mads-Ulrik Husum and Sine Lindholm. Image by Niklas Vindelev.The Growroom exhibited at Copenhagen Opera House. Image by Alona Vibe

To build a Growroom you’ll need 17 pieces of plywood, a rubber hammer, some metal screws, a drill and a CNC machine. The instructions are formulated the same way as any other Ikea piece would be, with step-by-step diagrams and instructions.

Once pieced together the structure stands at 2.8m x 2.5m in a spherical shape allowing plants to receive ample lighting within the vertical structure.

Image by Niklas Vindelev

The result is the production of fresh and healthy food, straight to the table from the plot they were grown in with accessibility and affordably key signifiers of a community minded project. The open source plans invite experimentation with the Growroom design.

“It is to support our everyday sense of wellbeing I the cities by creating a small oasis or ‘pause’- architecture in our high-paced societal scenery, and enables people to connect with nature as we smell and taste the abundance of herbs and plants” says Space10.

The downloadable files can be sourced, here.

Lucy Marrett

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