According to IKEA, This Will Be Your Kitchen in 10 Years
When we think IKEA, we picture those ginormous blue stores with fields of parking. A pop-up store is probably the last thing you’d expect from IKEA, but that’s exactly what they’re doing with their new showroom titled IKEAtemporary. Focusing on life in and around the kitchen, IKEA is upping their culinary game with some new designs. IKEA asked 50 students from design schools in Sweden and the Netherlands to answer this question: “How will life in the kitchen and with food look in 2025?” The results were kitchen installations focusing on children, disabled people and the future of cooking, all using the new Metod modular kitchen range. Sadly, their pop-up-slash-showroom is only in Milan, but we’re still enjoying drooling over all the design ideas behind these kitchens.
The showroom designs touched on four main themes: storage, waste, water and cooking. Although nothing is overly futuristic, the overall vision is a much more realistic imagining of the future. One of the collaborators, Paoloa Navone, created a space that was dedicated to the Italian family. She wanted a space for passionate cooking, messes, people and of course, family drama. She told IKEA, “It’s not supposed to be perfect, but rather a little bit messy and ironic. Just like life itself.”
Another collaborator, Matali Crasset, created a multi-functional island with a young family in mind. To help the family spend more time together, Matali designed a kitchen built around a children’s playground where your toddler plays while you cook and you keep an eye on all the activity. A whole kitchen built with the child in the center? We’re feeling all warm and fuzzy.
One designer worked on making a kitchen that was functional for a family that had disabled members. The number one priority was to create something that didn’t look like it had been designed for disabled people. Usually designs for people with disabilities are all about function, which is a nice way of saying they are really ugly. Here, IKEA offers a beautiful design that everyone can use together.
The most futuristic of all the designs is the concept kitchen. Here you’ll find a pantry of individual self-refrigerating containers keeping food fresh longer and helping to avoid losing things to the moldy abyss that is the back of the fridge. You’ll get an interactive table, which would recognize the food on it and offer recipe suggestions. Now that sounds like some technology we could get excited about! There is also an integrated recycling system and in-home composting that takes waste from the sink and produces a pellet of compostable material that could be used for indoor gardening.
The mega pop-up also features the homeware collection designed by Ilse Crawford (get ready; it’s going to be released this summer) and IKEA’s charging furniture and lighting. These concept kitchens definitely capture IKEA’s passion for making our lives as easy as possible, and now they’re making “being green” even more doable. 2025 can’t come soon enough!
What do you think of IKEA’s kitchens of the future? Talk to us in the comments below!
(Photos + h/t Dezeen)
