IKEA provides us with a sneak peek into the future: the global furniture retailer commissioned Future Laboratory to make a survey in the UK and Ireland to find out, what the kitchens might look like in 30 years. This June, 1,895 respondents in the UK and 751 more in the Republic of Ireland shared their ideas on the must-haves of their futuristic cooking and dining space.
As it turns out, we will have «Back to Nature» kitchens inspired by the «grow-your-own movement,» as well as «Smart«(«caring for its inhabitants«) and «Emotionally Intelligent» kitchens, focused on «the mind, body and spirit of people.»
Image Courtesy: metro.co.uk
According to the report, the residents of both counties want the place where they cook dishes and have meals to be literally as ‘green’ as possible—they would like to grow their food in the kitchen, and so this area of the house or an apartment will be partly turned into a garden. They will also want the appliances and materials to be made of recycled materials. «The kitchen will come to embody a movetowards sustainable living and be a measure of how people adapt to changes in society,» the research says.
People also want their kitchen of 2040 to remain a quiet place for the whole family to get together, rest and enjoy freshly cooked food. The report suggests that the futuristic kitchen will become «the wellbeing hub of the home, and will be dedicated to enhancing and bettering the inhabitant.»
The consumers are predicting that the vegetables will be grown just at home, and so more likely in 30 years we will all witness the era of concepts like Hyundai’s Kitchen Nano Garden, which is fridge designed to grow food instead of just keeping it cool or frozen. As the number of people in urban areas is tending to increase, there will be less space for gardens or even mini-allotments outside the dwelling, so people will turn to growing their organic food indoors in special devices or just vertically on the walls to save space.
«Scarcity is on the consumer agenda as the major factor driving the depiction of the future kitchen. Water and land scarcity, climate change and urbanisation will make excessive lifestyles extinct not only out of necessity, but a collective outlook on living within means,» is stated in the end of the study.
The findings of the research were discussed at Barbican Art Gallery in London on Thursday, August 12, during The Surreal House Exhibition.