SPACE10 launches potentially planet-saving cookbook Future Food Today

SPACE10, Copenhagen’s best-known, ever-innovative research and design lab, have been working on something pretty tasty of late.

Billed as “a collection of delicious, sustainable and future-proof recipes that set up the perfect menu for better eating, both for ourselves and the planet,” Future Food Today sees SPACE10 steamrolling into the crowded cookbook market, hoping to entice environmentally-minded chefs the world over to ditch unsustainable protein and adopt a diet heavy in microalgae and insects.

As we steamroll ever closer to what feels like an increasingly more likely moment of genuine (and irreversible) ecological crisis and collapse, we’ve all got to do our bit in the battle for genuine sustainability, and the SPACE10 team seems to think that starting in the kitchen is as good an idea as any.

The book is a collaboration with creative agency Barkas. Their founder Mike Wittrup tells It’s Nice That, "Just like the title Future Food Today suggests, we kept the design aspirational, but down to earth. Working within the SPACE10 identity, we tried to embrace the universe of the chef, keeping information functional and let imagery document the process. The book is designed to be a tool in the kitchen and a conversation starter around the coffee table.”

Recognising the role that food production – and consumption – plays in our ongoing ecological woes, the SPACE10 team have devoted three years of intense research into “alternative ingredients, technological innovations and uncharted gastronomic territories,” hoping to inspire hardcore foodies and kitchen-shy cooking novices to reconsider their approach to dining.

“Although we cannot predict the future, we know that the way we consume and produce food must drastically change if we hope to make it better,” the laboratory says. “In the next 35 years, our demand for food will increase by 70%, and we simply do not have the resources to achieve this demand on today’s diet.”

Featuring a whole host of unusual but planet-friendly culinary delights – dogless hot dogs, anyone? – Future Food Today is what SPACE10 are calling “a cookbook for the future.”

Monique Schroder, SPACE10’s visual editor and art director for the book tells It’s Nice That: “We created Future Food Today to inspire ourselves and others to get curious in the kitchen, and to motivate us to take action through our food choices,” adding that, “Rekindling our basic human desire to cook and feed our-selves is the first step in bringing people closer to one another and the planet.”

Discussing the visual approach the lab took to producing a cookbook (which hits bookshops and adventurous kitchens alike on 21 May in Europe and 21 June in the US and Asia) that aims to kickstart conversations about nutrition, sustainability, and the future, Monique enlisted the help of food photographer Kasper Kristofferson, and SPACE10’s food designer Simon Perez. “We wanted to keep the photos simple and playful, staying away from overly stylised or sterile shots of food that may look like art, but don’t look too delicious,” Monique tells us.

“This was the backbone of how we framed the food that we were exploring in our Test Kitchen. We wanted to create a new and more honest approach to food – something that was instantly relatable and delicious at the same time. That’s why we chose to take pictures at the Test Kitchen whilst our chef was cooking, so the food as well as the process felt present and accessible. We of course gathered inspiration from a variety of different places, but we really tried to make something that filled a gap where sustainability, design, and amazing food can meet.”