Last year, IKEA’s philanthropic arm launched Better Shelter, a line of temporary houses that could be shipped flat and assembled in under 4 hours. The UN Refugee Agency has sent 16,000+ of these all over the world and they’ve taken a life of their own as hospitals, reception areas, etc. These are highly desirable as temporary multifunction structures that people can remix according to their needs and have inspired designers to revamp them due to their flexibility. To me, they’re an example of taking a basic idea (temporary spaces) and doing it well enough that it becomes generalized to a variety of functions in different contexts.
