Ikea's Kitchen of the Future Is Smart AND Beautiful

Updated on 1/19/2016 at 4:05 PM

Technology affects our relationship with food more than we realize, whether it's by using Twitter to order pizza or looking up a recipe on an app. But instead of waiting around to see how kitchens will adapt to this new relationship, Ikea has designed one from the future, a project it calls "Concept Kitchen 2025."

The idea is that this kitchen will be a place where people are less wasteful as the world's natural resources become more strained. In partnership with the design company IDEO London and two schools — the Ingvar Kamprad Design Center at Lund University in Sweden and the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands — Ikea conducted extensive research to learn how people use food. The group then came up with four ideas that have come to life through an exhibition at a pop-up store called Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy.

The Modern Pantry, the Table for Living, the Mindful Water System, and the Disposal System are the concepts that are meant to "facilitate mindfulness with embedded cues throughout the kitchen." Essentially, the Concept Kitchen is like a high-tech personal assistant that will help you be conscious of your food wastefulness without necessarily changing what you eat.

Check out what a modern kitchen in 2025 might look like, and get ready to start counting down the years.

The Concept Kitchen 2025 in its exhibition space.

What doesn't the Table for Living do? It lets you heat food directly on the table, suggests what to cook based on your leftovers, tells you how to cut certain ingredients, browses recipes, and cooks with different pans and temperatures.

Here's a closer look at how the table detects what vegetable is placed on it.

IKEA Concept Kitchen 2025

Check out this short video of how the Table for Living works. It's incredible.

The Modern Pantry is a visual pantry that aims to reduce waste. By letting you see what food you already have, the idea is that you won't buy excessive amounts. It also includes "smart induction cooling technology" that preserves your food.

Another view of how the pantry would look like with the different components, including the "inductive cooling containers," which keep food fresh by cooling it.

The Thoughtful Disposal System has both a waste and compost system. Both are designed to compact whatever material is placed in it. For nonrecyclable material, users will receive either an energy credit or debit in relation to just how resourceful or wasteful a person was.

To make the best use of water, the Mindful Water Use System includes two different ways of recycling water. One is a gray-water system, which reuses water for a variety of purposes, and the other is a black-water system that feeds water into the sewage system.

The Concept Kitchen 2025 in its full, smart-technology glory.