Imagine a kitchen without pots, pans or even recipes. It's a concept that one of the world's largest appliance makers envisions for the future. The heart of the whole unit is an all-in-one kitchen surface, kitchen table and bar. The changeable work area with the cooker, table and pots adjusts its shape when directed by the user. To use it, the cook places ingredients on the surface which analyses them to come up with recipe suggestions. Then the user marks with the hand size of the area. The depth is adjusted by pressing the malleable surface. Once the surface fits the requirements, the user sets the time and temperature with the swipe of the hand. The table can also determine whether the ingredients are fresh.
We want to create a concept that allows for a morph-living, which means you can have a living space that can either be your living room, your social zone, your kitchen, your bedroom, whatever that sort of adapted itself to how you live your life and what different situations you are in.
Some of the materials for the unit already exists, such as the malleable ferrofluid, a material usually made up of about 5% magnetic solids, 10% flatant and 85% carrier.
One of the biggest challenges is of course that you are skipping a number of product interations because you are looking so far into space all the time. So it's a number of product generations that you don't actually do so you are saying that, well done, take it quantumly and look at how are people gonna socialize. To do that, you are gonna have to release yourself from preconceived ideas what you can or what you can't in your own industry.
The company says for now, the concept is meant to trigger discussion, feed-back and ideas from designers and scientists. The company says it is doing a lot of trend in consumer research into how people would live and socialize in the future. According to research by the United Nations, 74% of the world's increasing population will be living in cities by 2050, making it necessary to rethink how space and energy is used and the environmental impact.
Natalie Armstrong for http://www.hxen.com
