Yup, modern sensibility is a tiny 76-page manual that will hopefully help you navigate any IKEA store. The title was taken from IKEA’s own 2019 annual catalog and is far from being a closed statement: it actually questions what IKEA could possibly mean by “modern sensibility” or if there’s any sensibility left at all in a time when we all probably own the same set of chairs that matches our table inside a space we like to call home.

The manual, apparently written by IKEA, contains a set of rules and instructions that explain to us what to do and how to act inside an IKEA store. These rules are a series of speculations and fictionalized inventories that require caution when being read and performed. These instructions guide the reader step by step, from beginning to end (that is, if they can find their way out). They also make reference to IKEA’s assembly instructions, as if experiencing a physical space could be part of a ready-made schema waiting to be assembled. The pages are numbered, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is an established order.

This publication attempts to encapsulate the feeling the average IKEA customer has when entering one of its stores: they might get lost and wonder if the whole thing (including the manual) was just a complete waste of time.