At Milan Design Week, IKEA Meatballs Fit Right In
IKEA is probably as well known for its meatballs as it is its furniture. They took that reputation and ran with it at Milan Design Week this year.
The Swedish furniture giant’s exhibition, “Food For Thought,” is set in the airy Spazio Maiocchi of Milan’s Porta Venezia district, and is focused on how food informs our homes and daily routines. The centerpiece of the installation is a true-to-form IKEA-style walkthrough of five staged rooms, inspired by all the ways people fill their bellies in the comfort of their own homes. Five different interior designers were paired with five different chefs from around the world to create rooms inspired by specific dishes, whether it’s the concept of eating hand-rolled pasta in bed or a tiny studio in the colors of kimchijjigae.
This also means there is food – a lot of it. Through April 26, the five chefs will each take center stage by heading a working kitchen in Spazio Maiocchi, offering their muse dish for the public to try in a rotating menu. The Billy bookcase is being celebrated in a pop-up café adjacent to the main installation. Meanwhile, the outdoor courtyard has been taken over by a Swedish-style saluhall, which features edible offerings from local Milanese vendors in addition to IKEA merchandise. There’s an IKEA x Chupa Chup meatball-flavored lollipop (which does, for better or worse, actually taste like a candied meatball). There’s real meatballs, soft serve ice cream, and an extravaganza of hot dogs. All the leftovers will be available on Too Good To Go, an app that helps rescue surplus food from waste.
“We’ve been working together for two months,” London-based interior designer Oliver Lyttelton and Seoul-based chef Tina Choi tell Highsnobiety. “We developed a friendship talking about design, and things not including design.”
It’s playful, it’s colorful, and longstanding fans of the brand can see everything from the big-box items to those rarified vintage pieces. And that’s not the only surprise that IKEA has up its sleeve. Perhaps the most exciting part of the exhibition was the interactive preview of three new pieces from IKEA’s upcoming PS 2026 collection. Originally, the objective of PS was to offer a space to challenge exclusivity in the design industry by offering more stylish, innovative pieces at lower price points. It’s clear that this is still the goal for PS. Designer Mikael Axelsson unzipped the fabric covers of his kelly green, chrome-wrapped armchair to reveal inflatable cushions inside, while Marta Krupińska’s cheerful rocking benches could fit neatly into any tiny studio apartment and are made in solid pine wood. Rotterdam-based Lex Pott, known for his work with HAY Design, was tapped to create a colorful standing lamp that folds into three different silhouettes – and clocks in at just EUR 39.95.
“We really wanted to bring a sense of Scandinavian design and simplicity, but reframe it as something not only minimal and serious, but also bold and brave and experimental,” IKEA creative leader Maria O’Brian tells Highsnobiety. “We also had this idea of, how do we bring play into functionality? Not only make it frivolous but adds a functionality to something.”
Modern life was top of mind for everyone in the design process. Axelsson recalls visiting students in London and hearing frequently about how they moved several times per year, often carrying their furniture under their arms on the subway or taking expensive Ubers to transfer everything between flats. “I just have the thought that like, young people move around so much these days, and if you can carry it on your arm, that’s of course a big plus,” he says. And Pott agrees that balancing affordability, elevated design and accessibility was a priority for these PS designs.
“The compact living is really a new change for all of us, I think, or at least most of us, that we have to face,” Pott adds. “If you have a tiny room or space, [the lamp] is a lot of fun.”
The IKEA PS collection will drop fully in May. This is the first PS line to be released since 2017. “Food For Thought” is free to the public at Spazio Maiocchi from April 21 to April 26, 2026.
