The HAVSTEN sofa arose from a new need that IKEA had identified. More and more customers wanted to furnish their outdoor spaces, balconies, terraces and gardens in a style that felt like indoors. A bit like an extra living room beneath the open sky. HAVSTEN, a flexible sofa that could be used both indoors and out, was a response to this need.
Designer Andreas Fredriksson designed a modular sofa that could be added to, from armchair to two-seater sofa to three-seater sofa ‒ or as long as required. He wanted to create a truly flexible sofa, “easy to move around and use to furnish in different ways,” as Andreas himself put it.
Before this, most comfortable outdoor sofas had been big and heavy. But not HAVSTEN. Andreas’s idea was to use light steel tubes to build an airy metal skeleton, that was covered in mesh to form the frame of the sofa. Thick cushions resting on the mesh provided comfort, and were treated to withstand blazing sun and light rain. “I wanted to achieve an overall ease with this open design while ensuring that all parts fit in a flat package that you easily take home from the store,” Andreas explained. His success was confirmed when HAVSTEN won an international Red Dot Award for design in 2017.
Damon Hird, who worked with product development for outdoor spaces at IKEA, described HAVSTEN as “the outdoor space’s durable anchor point”, a neutral base that can be styled and adapted freely. Customers have clearly discovered this too, as HAVSTEN is still sold at IKEA in 2021.
