Swedish Experimental Food Lab Erects Tiny Edible Cityscape

Atelier Food is a new food lab in Sweden, dedicated to exploring the future of food with a multi disciplinary team of artists, designers, scientists and business developers and chefs. They're exploring ways to rethink our food systems by running workshops and experimental restaurants. When it came time to promote their work, Art Director Petter Johansson decided to create a link between food and society by making a still-life city from food.
Atelier Food side angle
Look close, that's food.Look close. That's food.

Atelier Food is a new food lab in Sweden, dedicated to exploring the future of food with a multidisciplinary team of artists, designers, scientists, business developers and chefs. They're exploring ways to rethink our food systems by running workshops and experimental restaurants.

When it came time to promote their work, art director Petter Johansson decided to create a link between food and society by making a still-life city from food.

The playful design accompanies a program that is vast in scope. "It's all about showing how we can develop the society with food," says Johansson. "Food is an important part of many future challenges. Atelier Food links food with sustainability, energy, culture, urban development and transportation."

Creative Director Jan Åman says the idea for Atelier Food came after hosting virtuoso chef Ferran Adrià in Stockholm. (Adrià is best known for the experimental restaurant El Bulli, which was at the forefront of experimental cooking.) "After I invited him to do a seminar and round-table discussion at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Swedish government realized that there is a possibility to see the food as a tool for innovation and tool for social change," says Åman.

"The still life represents the work of Atelier Food and the connection between food and society," says Johansson. "It links the playfulness and creativity within the project with the ambitious goals and long-term challenges."

"The still life represents the work of Atelier Food and the connection between food and society," says Johansson. "It links the playfulness and creativity within the project with the ambitious goals and long-term challenges."

Atelier Food is organized as a restaurant with an experimental arm of ongoing workshops and food labs. One of the efforts is Re-Thinking Public Food, a long-tail process lab about creating good low-cost meals. Using a live restaurant setting, they can test out food ideas with daily servings of new menus. They plan to present the results at the World Fair in Milan in 2015.

"It is all about global surviving, says Åman. "Food is everybody's concern. It has the potential of making a large number of people understand the need for change."

When Wired asked Johansson why he became involved, his answer was even more direct. "Food is simply the future."

Photos courtesy: PJADAD.

The whole grid of Atelier Food. "We thought it was a great way to show a system on how to integrate food, society, playfulness and creativity," says Johansson.

The whole grid of Atelier Food. "We thought it was a great way to show a system on how to integrate food, society, playfulness and creativity," says Johansson.