It’s Sunday lunchtime in east London and a small huddle of people is gathered around a timber structure in the middle of the street, hungrily awaiting a plate of steaming butter bean stew and freshly fried flatbreads. But this is no ordinary street food stall. The whole thing arrived behind a Lime e-bike, unfurling like origami to reveal a counter space, shelves and an overhead canopy for awnings.
East London locals at Larder’s launch event in July © Claudia Gschwend
This is the first prototype of Larder, a compact cupboard that unfolds into a functional kitchen. It was designed to attach to the various rentable e-bikes available in urban environments, “like a plug-in to the existing fabric of the city”, says Ivan Chan, an architect and UCL lecturer who co-created the kitchen with Damayanthi Ponnuthurai, a writer and social entrepreneur who started out at Notting Hill bookshop Books for Cooks. Built using materials donated by the high-end outdoor kitchen maker Vlaze, this first model of the mobile kitchen will be lent to charities and community groups across the country planning to host their own cooking events, starting at the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve later this month.
Larder creators Ivan Chan (centre) and Damayanthi Ponnuthurai (right) with Linn Li, a UCL Bartlett student who helped design and build the kitchen © Claudia Gschwend
