The future kitchen envisions an age of scarcity
These days we line up to buy iPhones, but half a century ago, they were flocking to see gleaming, futuristic prototypes of kitchen appliances.
General Motors’ Kitchen of Tomorrow, part of a travelling exposition of the company’s products, featured an Ultrasonic dishwasher and an Electro Recipe File.
Cooking technology was a matter of geopolitical importance. President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev argued about whose nation had better dishwashers during the U.S. president’s 1959 visit to Moscow.
Things that seem mundane now excited our parents and grandparents’ imaginations. Their enthusiasm is understandable: rapid technological progress had made their lives easier, as new inventions eliminated hours of menial labour. Many of them would have been used hauling and chopping firewood for cooking. Stoves and electricity gradually entered North American homes over the first half of the 20th century, according to data compiled by W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm in The New York Times.
The refrigerator transformed the kitchen even more quickly, replacing the icebox. In 1930, fewer than 10 per cent of American households had a refrigerator. Nearly all did by 1960.
Since the introduction of the microwave in the 1970s and 1980s, though, kitchens have changed little, despite the advertisers’ promises.
Industrial designers are still thinking about the future of the kitchen.
Ikea’s Concept Kitchen 2025, went on display earlier this year in Milan. The designers incorporated a 40 per cent increase in the cost of food into their prototypes, along with constraints on energy, water and living space. They wonder whether the world will be able to sustain its eating habits, especially its taste for meat. General Electric’s designers had similar concerns in mind when they unveiled a model kitchen two years ago. Instead of a world of leisure, these corporations are preparing for a hungry, thirsty, crowded future.
The Swedish furniture manufacturer collaborated with design students and the design firm IDEO to design a sink that separates wastewater for the sewer from grey water reused for washing dishes and irrigation. Their miniature refrigerators communicate with transmitters printed on the food’s packaging to regulate the temperature, so that the appliances don’t waste energy keeping food inside colder than necessary.
Like the Kitchen of Tomorrow of an earlier generation, some aspects of Ikea’s Concept Kitchen seem disconnected from real cooking. The most precious resource in any household isn’t food or water, but time. Convenience is an important reason that families eat so much meat and processed food, even though they require more resources to produce and are more expensive as a result. Vegetables require soaking, washing, and careful planning — they don’t keep well, no matter how intelligent your refrigerator. If they spoil, a family will have to make another trip to the grocery store.
And a kitchen that is designed to help save money on food, water and energy might not change the kinds of foods that families buy, unless the design saves them time as well. Research and survey data suggest that families with more material resources do not spend much more on produce than those with less means. Ikea’s answer to this problem is the digitized Table for Living, which uses a camera to identify ingredients placed on it and suggests recipes.