IKEA Wants You To Taste Test Its Hydroponic Salad at London Design Week

We’ve seen purveyors of art and clothing successfully attract customers to temporary storefronts, and now farmers are set to enter the pop-up shop arena, courtesy of IKEA’s SPACE10Lab which houses a pop-up vertical farm in Shoreditch, London.

Launched during the London Design Festival this week, the LOKAL pop up allows visitors to sample fresh food where it’s being harvested. The LOKAL pop up’s high-tech hydroponics, or soil-free, farm is backed by artificial lights and a computerized automation system that enables it to produce the freshest, most nutritious food in a more efficient and sustainable way.

As Inhabitat reports, “SPACE10’s system can grow vegetables three times faster than traditional methods with 90 percent less water, less waste, and without the need for soil and sunlight in a much more space-efficient footprint.”

In the future, the system will operate solely off of renewable energy, but its current method of technological support is still rather impressive. Its modified LED lights allow food to be grown year round, a process that is carefully tracked by sensors that allow the system to adjust its methods to facilitate faster growth. In turn, Google Home receives the gathered data.

The six-day event opened to the public on Sept. 18 and runs through Sept. 23. Visitors can partake in various events such as sampling salads made from hydroponic greens and locally sourced ingredients.

Additionally, there are multiple interactive workshops for adults and children including SPROUT, which experiments with the concept of utilizing voice technology to make local farming more accessible; a Food Preservation Workshop that breaks down the ins and outs of food preservation and waste reduction; and a Grow Your Greens Workshop that teaches visitors how to grow a plant hydroponically and even sends them own with their very own piece of greenery.

Get more details on IKEA’s SPACE10Lab on LOKAL’s website.