SAN SEBASTIAN/DONOSTIA, GIPUZKOA, BASQUE COUNTRY, SPAIN

the GASTRO-ECOLOGICAL cycle

Where gastronomic emergence becomes a futuring methodology.

In the coastal laboratories of San Sebastián, where ocean mists kiss the cutting edge of cuisine, a new form of futures practice is simmering — not in theory, but on the stove. The Basque Country is a natural at this: rich with gorgeous products and traditions, but also powered by forward thinking experts in gastronomy. It’s not for nothing that Donostia is home to the Basque Culinary Center, the Mycelium Gastronomy network, and the revolutionary Gastronomy Open Ecosystem.

The project is not a food festival. Not a trend report dressed in edible foam. This is The Gastro-Ecological Cycle — a living, breathing process where gastronomy becomes a speculative technology, and cooking is used not to predict the future, but to compose it.

Here, dishes are not just plated — they are provoked. What happens when a tasting menu becomes a tool to model long-term climate impact? What does a dessert look like if it's based on the emotional palette of intergenerational grief? Can fermentation be a metaphor generator for adaptive systems thinking?

This isn’t about food-as-content. It’s food-as-medium, food-as-system, food-as-inquiry.

Idea for the First Pilot: Tectonic Plates.

An immersive studio disguised as a kitchen.

A dozen thinkers, chefs, sensory scientists, and speculative designers come together to develop and test edible tools for thinking in cycles, thresholds, disruptions, and deep temporalities.

One day they model ocean acidification through the transformation of textures.

Another day they stage a banquet using only extinct or nearly extinct ingredients, annotated with narrative prompts.

Each meal becomes a futures thinking device.

Each mise en place a speculative map.

This is not only performance. It’s not just art. It’s a method.

>>> Call for Co-Conspirators

We are seeking the curious. The bold. Those who believe a spoon can be as powerful as a pen, and that the future might be better felt through umami than through a white paper.

Come if you’re a chef with questions. A scientist with taste. A designer who thinks in fermentation cycles. A futures thinker hungry for more-than-verbal tools.

Let’s cook the future — not just talk about it.