FUTURE PROOF

Food and the way we cook is at the forefront of a new wave of design, says Shannon Harley.

THE WORLD’S MOST famous trend forecaster, Lidewij Edelkoort, says food has graduated to be a new design discipline. The trend forecasts from Edelkoort’s company Trend Union are used by noted names in fashion, design, retail and hospitality. Her latest report, ‘Form Follows Food’, reveals cooking to be the largest mega-trend. “Plating is the new hobby and foodies the new cultural elite,” she says.

Edelkoort says three trends will inform kitchen design; trends informed by how we are eating now:

CONCRETE In the concrete kitchen, the mood is Brutalist, inspired by sturdier foods such as rough-hewn artisan cheeses, nut butters and loaves made with alt-grains such as rye and buckwheat. The textures that have come with the craft revival in food will translate to tactile kitchen surfaces. New concrete blends made from biomaterials echo the no-waste food movement and the return to cucina povera or peasant cooking.

BLACK The return to primal rituals – foraging, hunting, open fires and the use of charcoal in everything from staining bread to water filtration – heralds a new dark aesthetic. Edelkoort says dark kitchens will be an antidote to the sterility of white environments, and forecasts materials such as black quartz, cast iron and clay pots, oxidised metal and lacquered wood that will mimic scorched ingredients, dark-hued wholegrains and dirt-flecked vegetables picked straight from the earth.

MARBLE Today, the use of marble is for its mottled surface, a trend that’s triggered by our desire for the more natural – a reaction to the cookie-cutter products of the industrial food system. Think of the marble slabs on show in restaurants such as Fred’s and A Tavola in Sydney.