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  • This is Ikea's future lab.

  • It's a space in downtown Copenhagen where researchers are creating a sustainable future by changing the way we live, work, and eat.

  • Space 10 was founded in 2015, and its aim is to imagine just what the future may look like.

  • It works with specialists, experts, and creatives from around the world to create projects that it hopes will make the world a better place to live.

  • Its concepts include futuristic Ikea meatballs made from insects, lab-grown meat, or food waste that may become the meatball of tomorrow.

  • A virtual reality app that lets you place Ikea furniture in your home before buying it.

  • Even an on-demand driverless cafe, shop, or office that makes its way to you at the push of a button.

  • Ikea's a company that many people around the world, they know about.

  • But like any other company, they are extremely keen on finding new and better ways, more sustainable ways of creating a better everyday life for people.

  • And what we basically do is that we are a research and design lab.

  • And we try to understand where the world is moving and try to find ways of making it better, basically.

  • I think for many people, research is seen as a little boring and facts and data, and nobody really seems to get super excited about it.

  • We try to collaborate not just with data scientists and researchers and academics, but also with designers and creatives to translate that into something that people actually give a damn about.

  • Space 10 showed us the project it's currently working on, a model village that's completely self-sufficient when it comes to electricity.

  • So all the solar panels will be connected to a computer underneath the houses.

  • And you will be able to see which houses are selling and which houses are buying power.

  • The beauty of this project is also that you can see that this little village or community would actually be more a thing where everybody chips in a little bit.

  • The energy from the community, the money goes back into the community so you have a more democratized way of actually distributing and buying energy.

  • Space 10's experimentation continues in its test kitchen where the foods of the future are dreamt up.

  • We do a lot of funny, weird, novel explorations within the field of food.

  • And one big challenge is that we throw tons of food away each year, and it's often actually perfectly fine.

  • One thing I know for sure that a lot of people are throwing away is spent coffee grounds.

  • And facts are that when you brew a cup of coffee, you only use 2 percent of the nutrient that are in there.

  • We explored a little bit growing mushrooms.

  • There's no mushrooms yet, but as you can see, the fungus is kind of growing.

  • These are for oyster mushrooms, and then you basically just mix it with the spent coffee grounds.

  • And then when it turns completely white, you add another layer of coffee grounds, and then you just follow the process.

  • When it hits the surface up here, you remove these, the mushroom will start to flower.

  • There's also these shortbreads with coffee grounds in it.

  • Simon showed us how he makes a dog-less hot dog.

  • A meat-free recipe that has just as much protein in it as a normal hot dog.

  • The hot dog is one of the recipes in Space 10's new cookbook.

  • And it uses the blue-green algae spirulina as a protein source.

  • Spirulina is one of the fastest-growing organisms in the world.

  • It's easy to digest, full of iron, and contains around 60% protein.

  • The hot dog itself is replaced by a dried and glazed carrot along with beetroot ketchup.

  • It's served with hydroponically grown leaves and salt-and-vinegar-sprinkled insects.

  • Each element is designed to be sustainable but also tasty.

  • So what did it actually taste like?

  • I think this is probably the most sci-fi thing that I've ever eaten.

  • It doesn't taste at all how it looks.

  • It looks like it'd taste very green, very healthy.

  • But it's not.

  • It's just sort of, as you said, like an explosion of flavors.

  • They don't taste of that much themselves.

  • They're kind of slightly nutty.

  • The salt and vinegar is really nice, a nice snack on the side.

  • Space 10's ideas are experimental, and you may not be eating an algae hot dog the next time you visit Ikea, but these projects might just be a look at the future to come.

  • It's become very clear that there is no one future.

  • It's many futures based on the many people and countries and cultures around the world.

  • And I think that is...

  • I think what we will see in the coming years that we will probably move away from this consolidation of very few platforms,

  • of very few visions of how the world should be or how we should dress or what we should eat or what we should say and where we should do it.

  • Towards, you could say a more distributed future where technology, designs, businesses, societies, and communities.

  • They will understand that they actually have the power to do something in their own world, in their own society.

  • And that will drive many different developments.

This is Ikea's future lab.

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