Lil’ BILLY Mobile Research Lab

Materials: Mini BILLY Bookcase (800.857.07), UPPTÄCKA Shopping Bag w/ Wheels (501.927.37)

Description: As part of interdisciplinary research project between Artists and Anthropologists at Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden, we created this Lil’ Billy Mobile Research Lab. Lil BILLY features a set of interlocking stools, two shelves, a battery operated LED light, and a rolling cart to make it portable. It also features a custom all IKEA tea set for use during our conversations with our research subjects – BILLY Bookcase owners in Stockholm, Sweden.

The modifications are minimal but include cutting out space for the shopping cart wheels, which happened to be exactly the same width as the small BILLY, making the base support slightly taller and moving the bottom shelf up to accommodate the rolling cart height. We made the stools out of extra BILLY parts, left over from the first assignment in our class – buying a BILLY bookcase and bringing it to class on the first day for assembly.

We made two copies of this Hack, one that we rolled around during our research and one that the Kungens Kurva IKEA created a custom flat pack box for.

More information about the project can be found at this link.

~ John Freyer, Stockholm, Sweden