Tag Archives: Dining

This concrete restaurant merges brutalist architecture with a vertical garden design for an inviting green vibe!

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Walking into the Loop Design Studio’s Playground Restaurant, patrons will feel transported to some whimsical greenhouse somewhere in the middle of their concrete city.

When a new restaurant opens up, it has the potential to change the entire vibe of your neighborhood. Restaurants have to make sense of the neighborhood they come into and contribute something new to it. The new Playground Restaurant in the commercial hub of Chandigarh, India tries to do just that by incorporating familiar brutalist and modernist interior design elements and blending those with blooming plant life to give the recognizable concrete look playful, green energy.

A cinder block wall forms an irregular building pattern and merges a concrete look with a vertical garden of potted plants. Overhead, a translucent glass ceiling disperses soft light, and the surrounding walls, plotted with concrete planters and greenery, aerate the restaurant’s open-air space. While markings of the city’s modernist origins appear throughout the restaurant, those are juxtaposed with key biophilic design elements.

The industrial ceiling is softened with vintage hanging lamps and surrounding greenery. Even the walls, made from protruding cinder blocks, are bustling with vines and plant life. The cinder blocks assemble an irregular pattern, stacked on top of one another at varied orientations. Loop Design Studio filled the blocks’ exposed cores with vintage glass Edison light bulbs that emanate warm, golden light and the blocks that jut out from the wall with potted plants.

The wall between Playground Restuarant’s cinder block walls is lined with audio cassette tapes. A woodfire oven sets the stage for the restaurant’s elevated, cozier corner that features terracotta flooring with polished cobalt blue tiles.

Rustic, mismatched wooden tables fill the interior of the Playground, enhancing its cozy appeal. Flanking both sides of a wall lined with audio cassette tapes, the cinder block walls create a sort of shelf system which Loop Design Studio filled up with warm lighting fixtures and plenty of different potted plants, like dracaena and evergreen vines.

The restaurant’s lounge area features webbed woodwork and brass accents to evoke a darker, more romantic mood. By tapping into Chandigarh’s brutalist cityscape while embracing the natural playfulness of biophilic design, Loop Design Studio established a restaurant that feels familiar and sheds new light on the city’s ingrained concrete personality.

Designer: Loop Design Studio

Smart Kitchen Appliances that will transform you from a home cook to a MasterChef!

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The perfect set of kitchen appliances can make your daily life and cooking sessions a whole lot easier! But, honestly, after an exhausting day at work, I really don’t have the energy to deal with cumbersome and technical kitchen appliances. This is where smart kitchen tech comes in! Smart kitchen appliances quite honestly do most of the work for you! You simply press a few buttons, adjust some settings on the touchscreen, and most of your kitchen chores are almost done. Smart kitchen appliances can be a blessing in disguise, and we’ve curated some of our absolute favorites from you. From a smart cutting board that track’s your food’s nutritional value to a smart wok that automates most of your cooking work – these innovative kitchen appliances are the superhero sidekicks, you need on your cooking adventures!

That plastic kettle sitting on our kitchen counter probably looks like something from a time capsule compared to all the other appliances that have gotten design makeovers. Finally, it is the kettle’s turn and the B POINT shows it all off. It features a touch interface that instantly gets the appliance up to speed with others and lets the user form a more organic connection with it. The circular display has two rings – the outer ring shows the temperature and the inner ring shows the water level inside. Countdown starts after setting the water temperature and will beep once it is ready! The choice of CMF really elevates the simple appliance into an aesthetic product that you can display proudly on your kitchen counter.

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Decker is an all-electric appliance so grilling on it is devoid of fossil fuels like coal. It creates a smokeless experience which is perfect for an urban kitchen or a balcony. Young millennials and Gen Z have little access to the experience of cooking food on a grill. Using a BBQ grill indoors only creates a fire hazard but most living quarters don’t allow them because of the smoke and soot which can be bothersome in cities where people are often living too close to one another. The team elaborates, “We created a clear yet functional UI that displays options as and when the functionalities are selected. The display screen is a hi-definition OLED display that is touch-sensitive with multi-touch as well as provides haptic feedback to the option selected. With the three functional elements of a stove, grill, and oven, the options for each use case are already mapped out so the user doesn’t have to navigate through a whole bunch of visual clutter thus creating a Dynamic UI.”

Food One was designed for young people living in cities who don’t have either the time or skill set for cooking multiple meals throughout the day. Beginning early 2020, the pandemic’s quarantine orders forced many of us out of restaurant booths and into our kitchens to cook our own meals. Fully integrated with smart technology, Food One operates as a classic smart assistant, with Bluetooth connectivity and app compatibility to connect to your smartphone or other smart devices. After connecting to Food One’s app, users can choose from a long list of available recipes suitable for cooking with the smart wok. Alternatively, those who enjoy cooking can upload their own recipes to Food One’s app for others to learn and follow.

There is a Korean practice of covering food with a cloth (Sang bo) which has been a tradition for centuries and has worked well – a ramie or silk fabric covering keeps it ventilated in the summers while a thicker fabric keeps it insulated in the winters. Inspired by this, the Mother’s Heart was designed to keep food fresh and retain its original nutrient quality. It is a simple device that is crafted like a dome food covering and an accompanying base plate. The covering has a dial on top and that lets you adjust the settings based on the food you’ve cooked. You can select between refrigeration or warmth and there is a timer feature that lets you select for how long you want to keep it running.

The Café Appliances Specialty Drip Smart Coffee Maker is a smart coffee machine with built-in WiFi that lets you enjoy drip coffee without any hassle. Amped with Voice-to-Brew controls, you can customize your own coffee, and even control parameters like temperature and strength. The built-in WiFi allows the gadget to connect to Alexa, Google, and the SmartHQ app. The auto brew setting enables you to prepare your coffee exactly the way you want it! Not to mention, it has been amped with a sleek and stunning design!

The Foody looks like most smart speakers but comes with a few crucial design details that set it apart. While it is, in spirit, a smart speaker, perhaps the most interesting detail on the device is a circular display on the top that slides from left to right. Apart from acting as a screen for viewing things like recipe thumbnails and cooking times, the display also acts as a switch that lets you tell the Foody speaker what’s in your pantry versus what isn’t. A camera sits at the central position of the circular slider, allowing you to scan the items you purchase. When you buy an item, keep the slider display towards the left and scan the item to tell Foody you just bought it.

SMART by VLND Studio is as its name suggests a smart water purifier that provides clean drinking water via its 4-step filtration process. The unique system eliminates almost all the contaminants from tap water, including rust residue, calcareous, chlorine, infusible fine particles, bacteria as well as bad odor and taste. SMART’s design focuses on making it as user-friendly as possible. The smart water purifier is easy to use despite its complex functioning. Sleek aesthetics, an intuitive touch screen, and a human-centered design make it attractive, approachable, and simple to operate!

Designed by Germany-based Aurora Life Science, Nutrio takes the guesswork out of your diet. Sure, outwardly it looks like a cross between a cutting board and a cashier’s billing desk at the supermarket, but the Nutrio is in fact a comprehensive nutrition calculator that lets you measure your food in an absolutely new way. The chopping board comes with an entire host of sensors that can detect your food, weigh the food, and display all its nutritional information. Whether you’re using raw ingredients or even packaged products, Nutrio lets you scan your food, calculate your caloric and nutritional intake, and absolutely crush your diet because you’re much more aware of what you cook and eat.

Thermomix TM6 Smart Food Processor Oven is a multifunctional kitchen appliance that does the job of multiple kitchen gadgets! It can chop, slice, fry, steam, slow cook and knead! It transforms tough cuts of meat into moist and tender pieces. It can also sous-vide your meat and vegetables. The smart food processor comes amped with a wide touch screen display and an innovative weighing scale, allowing you to cook your meals in the simplest and most effective manner possible.

The tablefarm is exactly what its name suggests. A tabletop garden that grows your food for you… but not just any food. The tablefarm’s focus is on microgreens, which are probably more nutrient-rich than actual veggies, packing as much as 10 to 40 times more nutrition in their small leaves and stems. If you’re wondering what microgreens are, they’re vegetables and herbs harvested just as they develop their first set of true leaves in about 7 to 10 days. They contain just as many vitamins and minerals as they would as full-grown plants — or even more, and are ridiculously easy and quick to grow… so much so that the tablefarm literally does it for you.

Sustainable Kitchen Products designed to promote zero waste + eco-friendly living!

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It’s extremely important that we integrate sustainability into every aspect of our lives! And, our kitchen shouldn’t be an exception. Sustainability is now being extended to products and appliances in the kitchen as well! From a glass recycling bin that is interactive and educational to a food appliance that helps you grow your own meat – the list of kitchen equipment that is eco-friendly is growing by the day. And this collection of sustainable kitchen appliances will help you imbibe and achieve that zero-waste and eco-conscious lifestyle even more. It’s time to go green in our kitchens as well!


The Guangjing glass recycling station was designed to be an interactive product that played on the meaningful habit of recycling as well as the circular economy. The project aims to achieve an infinite circulation of glass and allows the public to participate in it which not only educates them but helps them associate the good habit with a positive emotion rather than as a chore. It uses the texture and reflectivity of glass as a material to create a two-way interaction between people and recycling – is not only a recycle bin, but an aesthetic and educational public installation. The recycling station can be set up anywhere – it would be a great sustainable and eco-friendly addition to your kitchen!

Turner designed Carnerie – a conceptual device that will let you grow your own meat in the future! Carnerie is a ‘grow your own meat’ device for around twenty years in the future. It is controlled by an app, whereby the user is able to order cell capsules from local farms in order to grow a variety of different types of meat. This conceptual, speculative project is designed to help us visualize what this future scenario could be like and whether it’s a future that we would buy into. By exciting, shocking, or even repulsing the viewer it enables us to question our existing meat consumption habits and whether they need to change.

This zero-waste kitchen is built from recycled stainless steel made in electric arc furnaces and it lasts forever. The large table is the core of the design, it is meant to be used as a cooking and eating surface. The structure has designated areas for glass containers, baskets for fruit and vegetables, a worm box, storage space for multi-purpose vessels, linen bags, and a vertical herb garden – it is indeed a highly functional and multi-faceted design! The worm box regularly provides humus which can be used for the herb garden and if the kitchen is in a dark area of the house or if you live in a country with little sunlight then you might need a daylight lamp for your herb garden.


The Bamboo Food Steamer promotes environmentally-friendly practices in addition to healthy eating because, unlike trees, bamboo stalks grow back after being cut and require minimal effort from their farmers. The Bamboo Food Steamer takes these pros and adapts them into a modern cooking tool. Compared to traditional bamboo steamers, this product is cleaner, more portable, and easily accessible for consumers who are less familiar with Chinese culture and cooking techniques. The steamer seems very-user friendly, as it only has one control: a circular LED timer. Simply plug in the device, set your timer- no extra on/off switch needed.

MIITO is the sustainable alternative to an electric kettle! The intelligently designed appliance can heat any liquid directly in a vessel while cutting down on excess water and energy usage. You don’t end up refilling MIITO, the way you would a traditional kettle! Eliminate the electric kettle completely from your kitchen, and replace it with MIITO.

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Chopbox is a smart chopping board that has so many unique features but the most relevant one in these ‘unprecedented times’ is the fact that it can actually kill germs on your cooking tools and space! Get rid of counter clutter and those extra kitchen accessories with this much-needed upgrade. Chopbox is not only smart, but it is also strong and can hold 150 pounds of weight. It is crafted sustainably using bamboo wood which was used for its hard density, durability, and affordability. The board and its replaceable parts are all 100% recyclable as sustainability is important to the designers and the consumers.

The Re_insect Growing Pod helps you grow and create your own protein-packed food at home! Equipped with a modular design, Re_insect consists of five trays. Each harvest tray produces 100–300 grams of mealworms, and each mealworm is almost more than 54% protein. The growing pod helps you reduce your carbon footprint and grow your own food at home. It’s a product that majorly encourages the sustainable food revolution!


Designers like Eun-Jeong Pi attempt to bridge the small spaces in which many of us live with our strong desires to still remain close to nature and live sustainably – Farmin, a smart vegetable cultivator designed by Pi, offers one such bridge. Farmin is comprised of four main parts: the body, cover, seedling bags, and an LED lid. The body is definitely the hub of the vegetable cultivator, storing the soil, seedling bags, and water inlet. Along the left side of the body, an LED indicator signals to users when the soil in Farmin could use some water, which can then be distributed using the water inlet until filled completely. Then, on the right side, the body features an air filter that helps maintain the cultivator’s productivity and regulates the air that the plants breathe.

Gabriel Steinmann created P0 (pronounced pio like the letter and number) which stands for ‘project zero’  – a storage and shopping solution for food that aims to reduce consumption emissions. P0 helps us to switch to and maintain a plant-based diet and reduce the amount of food waste. The design blends organic and sustainable materials with an earthy aesthetic to invoke warmth and a more personal relationship with the items we use. Its ceramic body and textile lining help encourage a deeper appreciation for the food we consume and make us more aware of how much food we actually need to minimize wasting it. It is also a practical and attractive utensil in your kitchen – “a symbol of change, of becoming a little bit more human,” as rightly described by Steinmann.

This tableware collection consists of a bowl, plate, and cup made from bone china! Translucent and glazed, with a sleek white structure, the vessels instantly catch your attention! The Blue Hill cows consume grass, instead of following the typical grain-based farm diet. Since they devour grass, they move and roam freely in search of greener pastures. This ensures that their bones are much stronger as compared to the cows found on other conventional farms, leading to stronger, creamier, and more durable ceramics.

Face Masks are not going anywhere, so this mask is built with an opening for drinking liquids safely during travel

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Wearing face masks in airports and airplanes can get uncomfortable, especially if your trip is a long one. It can become difficult to breathe, there’s no eating or drinking, and it gets pretty sweaty under there. After traveling forty hours from the United States back to China, designer Ruitao Li developed the Umai Facemask, a silicone face covering with a breathing valve, air filter, and small mouthpiece slot that can be used to eat and drink while wearing the mask.

While we haven’t entered a post-COVID era yet, we are seeing a small light at the end of the tunnel. Rounding the corner, many restaurants and bars are opening back up to the public around the world. However, with new variants causing hot spots and surges all over the world, masks are still as necessary as ever. The Umai Facemask comes as a set, including the silicone face mask as well as a water bottle with a soft, bendable straw that fits into the mask’s mouthpiece slot.

Users can fill their bottles with their preferred beverages and say goodbye to airplane dry mouths. The removable straw can even be swapped from Umai’s water bottle and used to drink from another one. Umai Facemask’s breathing valve and air filter also make wearing a face mask feel a little more comfortable. Powered up with a type-c charge, the air filter ensures that the air you’re breathing in is clean and fresh, while the breathing valve circulates the air inside the mask to avoid the damp humidity that comes with conventional face masks.

Not eating and drinking while wearing a facemask has to be the hardest thing about traveling nowadays‒who doesn’t love airplane food? Designed to make the experience of modern travel feel a little more relaxed, the Umai Facemask doesn’t compromise the face mask’s primary purpose of keeping viruses and bacteria at bay, it enhances it. With adjustable aluminum nose pieces, hypoallergenic silicone covering, and several air filters, the Umai Facemask ensures comfort and safety.

Designer: Ruitao Li

Complete with a mouthpiece for eating and drinking, the Umai Facemask was designed to make modern travel more comfortable.

Constructed from hypoallergenic silicone, the Umai Facemask doesn’t cause acne or oily skin.

Traveling during the COVID-19 era requires a lot of caution, which can get uncomfortable.

Ruitao Li aimed to make a comfortable and safe face mask for the modern age.

Umai comes as a set, including the face mask, water bottle and bendable straw, and a type-c charger for the air filters.

Ruitao Li found that the most comfortable material for their face mask was silicone.

Medical professionals can also enjoy the benefits of eating and drinking while wearing a face mask.

The soft, bendable straw can be used for any water bottle as it is detachable.

Stocked with plenty of air filters and breathing valves, the Umai Facemask provides plenty of clean air to breathe.

This zero waste kitchen has a built-in herb garden & composter – a super multifunctional kitchen design!

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Did you know that 75 years ago, every kitchen was a zero-waste kitchen? Fun fact: in 1926, Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s kitchen had a wall of bins to store ingredients without any packaging at all! The concept of a zero-waste kitchen is not new and is certainly still in practice in many South Asian and East Asian countries that still use traditional storing and packaging methods. Obviously, our lives have changed and advanced tremendously over the last 75 years, so Ivana Steiner of Vienna is designing a zero-waste kitchen that fits our modern lifestyle and homes.

Steiner visited six zero-waste stores in Vienna for research and as an architect who has always loved working on kitchens, she took it upon herself to bring change through design. She wanted to dedicate her kitchen design to work around the current climate crisis while combating it. “Zero Waste does not hope that politics and business will tell you how and when you will implement your environmental measures and goals, but rather that each of us can actively contribute to climate protection through a resource-saving lifestyle. Zero waste not only includes avoiding waste but also how we deal with nutrition and cooking. If we concentrate on fewer, regional foods without packaging, we can actually implement changes in our immediate surroundings,” says Steiner.

This zero-waste kitchen is built from recycled stainless steel made in electric arc furnaces and it lasts forever. The large table is the core of the design, it is meant to be used as a cooking and eating surface. The structure has designated areas for glass containers, baskets for fruit and vegetables, a worm box, storage space for multi-purpose vessels, linen bags, and a vertical herb garden – it is indeed a highly functional and multi-faceted design! The worm box regularly provides humus which can be used for the herb garden and if the kitchen is in a dark area of the house or if you live in a country with little sunlight then you might need a daylight lamp for your herb garden.

The built-in herb garden and worm composter together make the process very efficient even for those who are taking beginner steps into a sustainable lifestyle – this way, you’re set up for success because the maintenance is integrated into how the kitchen functions. This kitchen stores everything in jars to avoid producing waste in the form of bin liners. Jars are also easier to refill if you take them to your grocery store. This was a fairly calculated design decision as the buying trend moves towards more unpacked items, especially in urban areas where the food is stored and sold in glass containers to encourage reuse. Glass jars are also sealed tightly compared to bins making it a more sanitary option.

Since the design is based on a minimalist lifestyle, the kitchen deliberately does not include upper cupboards or extra storage. You only keep things that you use every day – a limited number of 12 deep plates, 12 flat plates and 12 small flat plates, 12 water glasses, and 8 wine glasses are used and stored comfortably in the zero-waste kitchen. There is no dishwasher but it does come with a double sink for all intents and purposes as well as a rack for dishtowels. However, studies have shown that dishwashers are actually more efficient and save resources!

The European-style kitchen has a lot of prep space in form of pullout panels, a small oven as well as a tiny fridge behind the Planet B typography. Zero Waste Kitchen is small, deliberate, and purposeful in every detail and encourages a life of fresh food without waste!

Designer: Ivana Steiner

This instant tiny coffee brewing bottle mixes water with coffee grounds to make a cup in seconds!

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I’m part of the crowd that thinks getting coffee should be a reasonable excuse for being late. Business meetings, sports games, parent-teacher conferences, and lunch reservations can wait. Coffee comes first‒always. Some of us are thinking about coffee before we even brush our teeth in the morning. If you can skip the coffee, all the power to you. Besides the pursuit of punctuality, having access to a quick caffeine fix when you’re camping or on a road trip makes the difference between Hell and happiness. That’s just the truth. Giving life to that caffeine fix, Chinese designer Jiia Liu developed Saturnbird, a modular glass bottle that brews coffee in a matter of seconds.

Saturnbird comes in four pieces: a brewing top, liquid basin, lid, and coffee pods, allowing for easy brewing and cleaning. In Liu’s 3D visualization, the pods each seem to contain instant coffee grounds that turn into iced coffee when mixed with water. Once the liquid basin is filled with water, users can mix in a pod of coffee grounds, screw the brewing top back on, shake the bottle, and voilà! Instant coffee. The liquid basin displays line measurements that, when filled with water, indicates which coffee pod to pour‒140ml of water requiring a smaller pod than the pod mixed into 210ml of water. Featuring such a simple brew method, Saturnbird could become the go-to accessory for many campers whose first thought in the morning isn’t the chorus of chirping birds or the beautiful landscape, but how they’re gonna get their paws on their first cup of coffee. The liquid basin is constructed from glass with a silicone-coated glass brewing top and lid for a non-slip grip, allowing you to bring Saturnbird on hikes or water-based activities.

Whether you’re waking up in a forest, hundreds of miles away from the nearest cafe or in a daze, five minutes away from your first job interview across town, coffee accessories like Saturnbird allow coffee drinkers to get in their caffeine fix and get on with their day quicker than they could muster up a lame (and unnecessary) excuse for being late. Go ahead and walk into that meeting with a cup of coffee in your hands. You deserve it (and the one after it).

Designer: Jiia Liu

Saturnbird’s glass liquid basin screws onto a silicone brewing top for a non-slip grip.

Users simply mix coffee grounds with water for instant iced coffee.

The screw-top lid of Saturnbird allows users to insert their own straw.

The measurement lines indicate which coffee pods to use.

Modular by design, Saturnbird breaks away from its four components for easy cleaning.

These multifunctional magnetic cutlery-pieces snap into half to transform into chopsticks!

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Like Yin and Yang, the two chopstick halves make up a whole!

A winner of the European Product Design Award, the One Plus Three is all about combining functionality with elegance. Designed as a series of 3 popular cutlery pieces – the spoon, fork, and knife, the cutlery come with a parting line running through the center along with unusually tipped handles. Pull against the direction of this parting line and each cutlery piece splits into two chopsticks that can then be used to go from eating any other cuisine to eating Asian food! By integrating the tableware, One Plus Three hopes to integrate cultures too!

The One Plus Three’s design is rather elegantly creative. The magnets exist only at the ‘head’ of the cutlery and not the handle. In doing so, it ensures that the tableware stays together when being used as a spoon, knife, or fork. However, flip the cutlery over and separate them into two individual chopsticks and now the magnets get spaced further apart, ensuring that they don’t stick together when you’re trying to eat food with the chopsticks! Each cutlery unit even comes with wooden intermediary handles that act as insulation as well as a nifty grip!

Designers: Lu Hua Bin, Li Jun Jie, Zhang Jun Yi

Popcorn Monsoon exhilarates your senses – visually, aesthetically and with sound. Watch the video!

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Popcorn Monsoon does exactly what the name says – makes it rain popcorn! Everyone’s favorite movie theater snack that has also been a food staple for thousands of years finally gets the aesthetic machine upgrade it deserves. While the ancient Peruvians didn’t douse it with salt and butter like we do today, the process of heating kernels till they burst fluffy – whether using hot oil or heated air – has remained relatively the same. Carlier hasn’t invented anything but her Orville Redenbacher meets Alessi popcorn machine certainly makes the process of air popping (the healthiest method, mind you!) more colorful, playful, and dramatic! You can use a pot, foil-covered pan, specialty popper, microwave bag, or an air popper but the joy of hearing those mini Big Bang sounds remains the same.

“The drawings with which this project started were made to create a world of pure imagination that still makes sense in this one. Starting with shape and color makes a design process playful, later on, a surprising yet suitable function can be found and in this case, it translated into a popcorn machine. Like any other functional product, it had to be conceptualized and constructively thought through. Most popcorn machines are very dull and you can’t see the action – that’s what this machine blows up (literally!),” says Carlier. Add the kernels via a small cork-topped funnel, they will be heated up in cyclonic action, and eventually pour down like joyful, crunchy, edible rain!

Designer: Jolene Carlier

Sleek kitchen appliances that double as cleaning hacks so you can focus only on your chef dreams!

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Raise your hands if you found the perfect recipe you want to try but the thought of cleaning up after made you stop in your tracks? Consider me guilty. My Instagram feed is usually filled with baking recipes I want to try or the latest dumpling cooking technique, but the idea of messing up my immaculate kitchen space and then dedicate over 2 hours to cleaning up the eventual mess is enough too much to do on a Sunday night. The greatest chefs are those who have experimented the most in their kitchen and armed with these kitchen appliances – like a hands-free timer, a kitchen purifier disguised as a lamp, or even a kitchen with a hidden vegetable/dishwasher – I am ready to spend more time cooking rather than cleaning. Now, if only someone would invent self-cleaning plates but till then, let’s not wait to cook up a storm!

Vita Neo was designed and built to create space in the kitchen by merging the kitchen sink and dishwasher. The countertop sink features a stainless steel finish that mimics the jet-black, reflective nature of classic induction stovetops. When inactive, Vita Neo’s surface is continuous and discreet, creating more counter space when cooking or preparing the kitchen. Whenever users choose to activate the dishwasher, a sensor-operated LED display screen brightens up to reveal the different functions of Vita Neo, including vegetable and crustacean-washing along with dishwashing. Built with what appears as a soft-close lid, Vita Neo enacts the use of embedded swing hinges and cushioned, suctioned lining to open and close.

The No-Touch Timer gives you the chance to set the timer hands-free. When it is in its default mode, the device functions like a clock, but when you bring your hands near it, the device transforms into a kitchen timer. You can set the timer hands-free by taking your hands close by to wake the clock up. You can adjust the hands from a distance and the further away you take your hands, the more time is added to the clock.

Gökçe named his design the Fortido Induction Cooker – an innovative yet practical solution for quick, tasty meals in every kitchen type. The lower-level cooktop slides out like a drawer for convenience and is a boon to have as an accessible feature. The design of the radical induction cooker makes it perfect for modern homes that are getting a smaller footprint or even our favorite tiny homes! Fortido is the difference between hot comfort food or a cold, smushed convenience store sandwich for people who frequently change their apartments.

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Chopbox is a smart chopping board that has so many unique features but the most relevant one in these ‘unprecedented times’ is the fact that it can actually kill germs on your cooking tools and space! Get rid of counter clutter and those extra kitchen accessories with this much-needed upgrade. You can easily sanitize your knives and cutting surfaces, embrace your inner quarantine chef with germ-free cooking thanks to Chopbox’s built-in disinfecting UVC light – see I told you, this board is lit and literally! We clean our knives but do we ever think about the germs in knife blocks or the crevices of our cutting boards? With Chopbox all you have to do place your knife in between the two cutting surfaces and activate the small but powerful 254nm UVC light that can sanitize up to 3 knives at once as well as both the cutting surfaces. “Just one minute of UVC light exposure is guaranteed to kill 99.99% of germs and bacteria.





Each kitchen is different, there is a large variation in the depths and heights of cabinets and drawers; so the design of this Guttman cooktop was kept lightweight without compromising on the advanced technology and materials. It was important to highlight the drawer during use and assembling all components in a central zone for intuitive user experience – optimizing storage and making cooking a stress-free process. Cooktops are used every day and they have to be durable to endure the constant cleaning and cooking. It can wear down even the most enthusiastic chef and homeowner to maintain appliances. To make this easier all the components were made with precise dimensions so they would fit directly into the dishwasher. This cooktop setup should go straight on top of your kitchen wishlist!

We all have wanted to open the windows at some point when cooking not because of the smell but because of the particles that will be circulated everywhere otherwise. The ‘Keling’ is a conceptual air purifier combined with a kitchen lamp. The bottom is designed to absorb the fine dust generated while cooking while the top emits purified air. The height is adjustable and replacing the filter is more convenient than cleaning the bulky exhausts. You can also sync it with your smartphone to get control lighting, fine dust, cooking, filter, and wind direction through the mobile app.

Rather than living with that old, rancid, smelly trash for 3-4 days, the Alone food-waste processor helps provide a discreet way of disposing of small amounts of food at a time. Its unique right-angled triangular shape helps it easily fit into a corner of your kitchen, and its tall design makes it easy to remove the waste-bin and chuck your stuff in without bending over too much. The Alone food-waste processor then proceeds to break down your food, turning it from waste into a harmless, odorless, nutrient-rich fertilizer you can use in your own backyard or kitchen-garden.

Cooking for the first time can be scary – all that playing with fire literally! The last thing you need is splatters and spills to clean up after. This is where the Frywall comes into play. Fix Frywall around your pan and it always stays on guard, protecting your stovetop even when you stir with a spoon or flip with a spatula. Yet it lets steam escape, so proteins sear without getting soggy. You get the freedom of an open pan, with a lot less mess. And just roll it and store it when not in use! Now experiment fearlessly in the kitchen!

There’s something simple and beautiful about this chopping board with a storage box designed by Dewel. It ticks all the boxes of good product design, solving problems without creating new ones. You slice your veggies or any other food that needs slicing and then either store the sliced bits in the container and use it to directly empty contents into your cooking vessel, or use the board for peeling and store all the leftovers and peels in the container, which then empties itself into the waste bin.

The Cheat Sheets are basically, and this reference couldn’t be more relevant, social distancing containers for your ingredients. You use the same baking tray, but the Cheat Sheets silicone containers sit ON the tray, giving you miniature compartments to cook your food in. Veggies like asparagus that need shorter cook times can be added in the same tray as salmon, which needs more time in the oven. Once you feel like the asparagus is done, just reach in with your baking mitten and pull just the asparagus container out of the oven and let the salmon still cook inside. It’s easy, simple, and here’s the best part – your baking tray never gets dirty!

 

This ASMR tableware elevates eating into a blissful sensory experience. Watch the video!

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Before we even take a bite of that tasty dessert on the table, the anticipation assisted by our visual apparatus (our eyes) sends the signal to the brain. This is a way of nature to trigger the mechanical digestion in the mouth and the gut. Add the element of sound to the tasty mix and the treat is destined to be headed down the bliss route. The crisp sound of chewing the waffles or biting down on the strawberry – everything that you eat has the sound element which triggers the brain into nirvana.

The Sonic Seasoning by graduation project of RCA student Mengtian Zhang is a unique creation centered on the satisfying sensory experience of listening to ASMR (Autonomous sensory meridian response) sounds even before we take a bite. This project culminated from Mengtian’s pandemic-induced lockdown experience when she took to watching ASMR cooking videos to remain stress-free. “I can feel the texture and flavor of food such as crunchiness and freshness behind the phone screen.” There Mengtian was struck with the idea of using sound and visual effects to elevate the buildup expectations of taste before the first bite hits the mouth. This resulted in the set of plates and cutlery connected to sensors for detecting touch which then triggers the appropriate notes to go with the whole eating experience.

Unique isn’t it? In her setup the tools like a scoop or toothpick-like poker measure the applied force, reacting with a pitch/chord. There’s a finger bowl dubbed “seasoning device” which plays the ambient sounds of crunches or bubbling when the food is dipped inside. “I think the whole eating experience should be full of fun at first, and then people will focus on the sense of taste changing subtly with sound,” says Zhang. Interestingly, she found out that these sensory inputs can enhance the perception of the food’s taste even though it might not be that tasty. A perfect case for serving a very low sugar diet, but still perceiving it to be a lot sweeter than it actually is.

Zhang wants to take her creation to a point where she collaborates with a restaurant or science museum to serve food with a completely unique element. As she summed it up appropriately, “I hope the funny part of the work could reduce the pain of having a diet.”

Designer: Mengtian Zhang