This book looks really swell! There are probably no one left in the world who hasn’t heard about IKEA with its affordable build-it-your-self-furniture concept. Ingvar Kamprad, the man behind IKEA was only seventeen when started his soon to be blooming enterprise in 1943. Ten years later he opened his first IKEA store in Sweden. Today there are over 200 stores worldwide and as much as I love IKEA I also think it’s too ubiquitous and consumer driven. People throw away their furniture to buy new every two years because it’s so inexpensive, not stopping for two minutes reflecting on the design and functionality.

The book is titled “IKEA Design och Identitet” and can be bought from Adlibris if you live in Sweden. Which is your favorite IKEA piece?

IKEA’s catalogs are like a photo book of the Swedish home. Here contemporary living is reflected from the 1970s brown corduroy couches and painted pine kitchen tables to todays modern design of the PS-collection of top international class. It’s retro, nostalgia, present and future vision, all at once. But what lies behind such a strong concept that allowed them furnish almost every Swedish home for decades?

Don’t know what to spend that extra cash on? Don’t worry, there is still time. Our stores are open at convenient times and located just around the corner here in Yester Sweden. Today we are traveling back in time to visit Stockholm and Hudiksvall (north of Stockholm) where you can slowly waltz through the many isles of exotic groceries, the latest fashion, brand new color TV models and still have some time left over for a coffee and cupcake at one of the many cafes. Typical anchor stores of the time were ICA, Domus and Tempo – sadly only the first one is still alive. For more shopping goodness, check out the other parts of this ongoing series of retro retail mania.

I found some more photos of my favorite shopping mall in southern Sweden – Väla Centrum. It was built in 1974 outside of Helsingborg and took its inspiration from American shopping malls at the time – meaning that it didn’t look very Scandinavian or traditional, which I really love. It even had a birdcage with live canaries up until the mid 1980s. For more information and photos of the shopping center, see my earlier post about it.

Väla Centrum is a shopping mall located in southern Sweden just outside of Helsingborg. Been planing on writing about it for a long time now but have not been able to find anything useful – until now. This is the mall I grew up with. Many many Friday evenings and Saturdays were spent here when I traveled there going shopping with my family as a kid back in the 1980s and early 1990s.

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This is a cut from a educational promotion film that explains some aspects on why Täby Centrum was built. The film is in Swedish and narrated by the architect of the center who explains some particulars about it. If you look closely you will see the Domus sign in the background on the second floor of the mall. Domus was one of the typical anchor type stores at Swedish malls during the 60s and 70s. Most of the Domus stores are gone today or have been renamed Coop, which is the new brand for the KF owned stores. Täby Centrum is now the largest indoor mall in Sweden and one of the largest in Europe. It opened september 26, 1968 and had major expansions made in 1991. There are now plans to make it even bigger.

Listen to the dreamy shopping music that can be heard in the background inside the shopping center. If you like this kind of music, be sure to download my custom made compilation “Retro Shopping Volume 1 – Music to buy toasters by“.

Time for another peek at the past shopping experiences. This time we are leaving Sweden to have a look at some photos from an American shopping center. Since most of the Swedish malls and shopping centers that was built in the 50s, 60s and 70s all took their inspiration from the American malls, I thought it would be a good idea to compare the design and architecture of them.

This is Southdale Center Mall in Edina, Minnesota. It was built in 1956 and still stands today, but heavily modified of course. Southdale Center was the first climate-controlled enclosed mall in America. Same as Shopping in Luleå, Sweden was when it was built in 1955. So the Swedes beat the Americans by one year, which is kind of odd. For more past-time shopping experiences, be sure to visit my friend Keith’s Malls of America website.