Signals & Stats : Daily Signals

Preview: Bistro In Vitro

By Peter Firth 18 : 05 : 2015 Bistro In Vitro : Synthesised Meat : Design Fictions

Holland – This week’s Innovate reports on a fictional restaurant called Bistro In Vitro that imagines a future in which we eat synthetically grown meat.

Uses food design to overcome people’s preconceptions of synthetically grown meat
The concept was developed by Next Nature Network, a platform looking into the merging of the Anthropocene and nature

Rustic In Vitro featured in the In Vitro cookbook

Lab Pearls featured in the In Vitro cookbook

Dinosaur Leg featured in the In Vitro cookbook

Bistro In Vitro takes the form of an online interactive documentary, co-produced by Next Nature Network and Submarine Channel, that imagines a restaurant where lab-grown meat is the central ingredient of each dish. Visitors to a microsite can book a table for 2028, and choose from a selection of fictional dishes from meat fruit to synthetically cultivated oysters.

‘We now live in a time of rapid technological developments. Culture can hardly keep up. I believe that envisaging the potential impact of technology via tangible design fictions can help us to get a better grip on it,’ says Koert van Mensvoort, head of Next Nature Network. ‘In-vitro meat is a good example of a technology that feels completely artificial and unnatural today, yet how natural is it to keep millions of animals in small cages for meat production?’ he asks.

The Big Picture: Create design fictions. Whether planning internally or creating consumer-focused campaigns, we must imagine the future before we can create it.