Ikea is a big box store that has been around since the 1940′s, but only in America since the 1970′s. While Ikea is a big box store, they use the interior space very differently than most big box stores. The Ikea case studies include one located in Woodbridge, VA, and one located in the Netherlands. While the stores do set up isolation on their site from the context, they claim this is because of the merchandise sold. They need space to receive shipments of furniture, and people need cars to transport the furniture they buy home. On many of the sites, the box store is isolated from everything else, but they do pay close attention to the parking and customer travel paths. They use surface parking lots near the entrance, but also parking garages with entrances directly adjacent to cashier areas.
The interior organization is extremely thought out. They take the big rectangular box and divide it into two levels. Sometimes the store has two rectangular boxes pulled apart like a split level.
Inside these boxes, they are divided up into small sections. One level of the box (or one of the whole boxes) is dedicated to showrooms, and each showrooms is dedicated to a specific room of the house. For example, the bedroom showroom has partition walls to create multiple bedrooms showcasing different pieces of furniture and different configurations. Within these showrooms, one picks up a card per piece of furniture they are interested in that specifically tells where the pieces are once they enter the warehouse portion of the store.
A single path meanders through all these showrooms, creating a feeling that if one steps off the path, they may get lost. The path is very specific, walking through every showroom and making every inch of the showroom visible to the customer.
This path continues through all the showrooms, and then continues down the stairs to the next level of the store, containing the marketplace, where one can pick up lights, rugs, linens, etc. and the warehouse, where furniture pickup is located, along with the cashiers.
The path first enters the marketplace, which is a section dedicated to smaller furnishings that the furniture showcased above. The marketplace is also divided into rooms, but the merchandise within the rooms are not specific to a room in a house.
This freeform of merchandise relates to the path which has become more freeform at this point. The path continues out the marketplace section, and reaches the warehouse. The warehouse is a section of the store with typical efficient rows of furniture pieces lined up and stacked to the ceiling. This is where the customer searches for the pieces they need per furniture item. The path opens up here to allow customers to seek out the pieces they need, then once the rows of warehouse items end, one approaches a line of cashiers. At this point, the path is a visual path were one can see specifically where they need to go; for example the cashiers, then the exit signs.
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