In March, the Center led a 3 day design workshop with students from Gray’s School of Art and members of the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health in Aberdeen, Scotland. Together, we imagined future food scenarios and created products and prototypes that might be bought, sold, made, or eaten in 22nd century.
What will we find on supermarket shelves 100 years from now?
100 years is a long time; we don’t even know for sure if there will be supermarkets 100 years from now. Perhaps everything we want to eat will be 3D printed or delivered right to our mouths by drones.
Participants articulated hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares about the future of the food system through utopian, dystopian, or mixed scenarios.
Informed by the current research of scientists at the Rowett Institute, and inspired by contemporary news stories or trends, each team created a future food system scenario and product.
Participants considered the social, environmental, scientific and political contexts of their food-related product in the context and under the constraints of their future scenario.
The final day of the workshop was spent in MAKE Aberdeen where participants had access to rapid prototyping tools (laser cutters, 3d printers, etc.) to experiment with bringing their ideas to life.
Scenarios ranged from a post-meat war-torn nation with government instated home-growing units to humans moving under water into closed loop systems with designer air. Products ranged from 3D printed seeds for personalized nutrition to a survival book containing leaves of tear-away, protein-rich foods.