The Sausage of the Future: how food futurist Carolien Niebling tackles sustainability through design

Since then, her project has evolved and grown bigger than ever. As part of Singapore Design Week 2025, Carolien Niebling joined hands with local studios Roots and Kinetic Singapore, as well as DesignSingapore Council (Dsg) to launch the Singapore edition of The Sausage of the Future. There, she explored how design, local cultural heritage and science could be melded to allow us to eat more responsibly and creatively in the future.

In case you missed it: Nation by Design: 9 events to look out for at Singapore Design Week 2025

The Sausage of the Future: Singapore Edition saw Carolien Niebling working with Huber’s Butchery, The Meatery, Nithiya Laila and Marcus Tan to create four Singapore-inspired sausages, each made with sustainably sourced local ingredients. Huber’s Butchery created the plant-based Tropical Fruit Salami, The Meatery served up the Beef Tongue Bratwurst, Nithiya Laila came up with the Native Herb Ball, while Marcus Tan cooked up the Ocean Maw Dog.

Intrigued by her delicious vision of tomorrow, Tatler reached out to the Zurich-based Dutch designer and researcher to find out more. In this interview, Carolien Niebling invites us into her world—where creativity and systems-led thinking collide—and reveals how she steers food discourse toward sustainability, innovation, and deeper meaning through The Sausage of the Future.

Read more: Legacy Building: How Andre Huber of Huber’s Butchery is carrying on the family business

Can you tell us about how and why you started working with food as a medium?
When I studied at ECAL, pursuing a Master’s in Product Design, I wanted to do something meaningful and make a positive impact. I chose food because the food industry is massive and it can change quickly because people eat every day, multiple times a day. It made most sense to me to not just design around food, but to design the actual food to make more impact. This naturally led to treating food like product design: break it into building blocks, create prototypes, test with real producers, and focus on results people can actually eat.

What was the inspiration and story behind The Sausage of the Future?
When I started the project in 2014 as my master’s thesis at ECAL, meat consumption was just becoming a conversation. The most amazing aspect of the sausage is its development and functionality—it was the first piece of protein people could take with them on explorations of colder climates. The sausage and how it’s produced is perfect for redesigning and reducing meat consumption. The aim is to help the existing industry create new objects and evolve while staying in control of their own production.

A sausage can be seasonal and local, and it can keep changing as needs evolve. I map techniques, ingredients, moisture, flavouring, “glue,” preservation and nutrition—all the practical pieces—and recombine them into proposals that are tasty, realistic to produce, and future-oriented.

Walk us through the process of creating a “sausage of the future”.
I approach a sausage the way you would a lamp or chair. Start with context: where is it made, for whom is it made, when in the year will it be made, who’s making it, and what do we want it to do? Then, I assess the materials and methods: what is available locally, what skills and machines are already there, and what is the required shelf life?

For example, a butcher who serves many families in summer might turn a chipolata into a half-meat, half-seasonal-vegetable creation. Compared to regular chipolata, the seasonal version is lighter, has fewer calories and boasts a summery flavour, is easy to grill, and kids may eat more vegetables that way. Every recipe is tuned to the maker’s actual skills. 

Skillset-wise, a chef might be less focused on complex sausage-making techniques but is excellent at combining flavours and elevating textures. On the other hand, a butcher is usually great at advanced sausage-making techniques but needs more support with pairing ingredients and building flavour profiles. And economically, the key metric is time—if a batch takes much longer to make compared to regular sausages, it won’t be a viable, future-proof creation.

How did the collaboration with Singapore Design Week come about?
I was asked by Kinetic Singapore to work on an exhibition, and we decided that the first Asian edition of The Sausage of the Future would be a great fit. The sausage has roots all over the world, but as soon as you work with local craftspeople, the sausage becomes local. 

I chose each of my collaboration partners for their strengths. Huber’s Butchery is excellent at dried sausages, so challenging them with a fruit salami lets them extend a skill they have already mastered and could keep producing afterwards. The collaboration was very fruitful and the result very tasty. 

The Meatery took an unconventional and oft-discarded cut—the cow’s tongue—and linked it to celebrations with a rendang profile; it was super delicious. It plays with the psychology of disgust: the tongue is not a praised cut, but inside this delicious sausage, it fits perfectly and everyone feels comfortable trying it. Reducing food waste is an important goal to keep in mind.

Nithiya Laila, a culinary anthropologist, knows native ingredients inside out. Working with her helped me understand Singapore’s heritage. Because she often uses rice, I challenged her to swap rice for more future-resilient ingredients. We found staples such as sago and beans to be a perfect fit. We also added edible flowers and herbs grown by a local initiative, Edible Garden City, to her dish.

Marcus Tan brought deep local cooking experience to the collaboration. Together, we explored something a little more high-end in flavour while staying sustainable at the core. We learnt a lot about fish and scale-to-fin eating, and stayed close to heritage by creating an otah-inspired sausage. Pasar Fish, a local initiative that helps people navigate themselves through wet markets, helped us settle on the wolf herring as the main ingredient.

To bring the whole thing to life, I worked with Jonathan Yuen and Stella Kwan from Roots; they shaped the exhibition with absolute precision so the ideas felt tangible and inviting. The design guides you through the space and helps to experience the exhibition to the fullest.

What were the main challenges of and lessons learnt from creating local-inspired items for the Singapore edition of The Sausage of the Future? 
Singaporeans love to try new things, and trying is the first step to changing habits. In Europe, that first step can be harder. But the big challenge I faced was having to work remotely while learning about local flavours and ingredients, and navigating very different food legislation. 

Many local ingredients were new to me, but through clear explanations, I could imagine their taste and behaviour, and we co-created sausages from there. It was a new way of working for me: researching and testing with what I could find in Switzerland, receiving many Zoom calls and the occasional sausage shipment, but also learning to trust my collaborators and their local expertise.

What’s next for The Sausage of the Future project?
It keeps evolving—that’s the beauty of the sausage. The sausage is a flexible format that can hold so many kinds of nutrition, so there’s always a new direction to try. Right now, I’m excited to continue work in Asia: there’s a huge landscape of flavours, techniques and ingredients I’m still learning about, from native herbs and seaweed to different starches, spices, and preservation methods. 

I’d love to collaborate again with local chefs, butchers, and food producers to create region-specific sausages that feel truly representative of the region!

Have your “sausages of the future” become a staple in your everyday meals?
Sausage is definitely a staple because I love the occasions where I get to eat it—grilling by a lake or a grillwurst in the city—and we keep fruit salamis on hand for hikes and days out.

At home, we try to eat consciously and I believe in diversity, so I buy as many different kinds of food as I can find. If I find an ingredient I’ve never eaten before, I’ll usually take it home to cook with. But half the time, kids, work, and life in general wins and I have no time to use the ingredients. This has turned our flat into an eclectic pantry with two fridges, which I secretly love. My favourite moments are when the kids try something new and you can see their reaction.

Which Sausage of the Future is your favourite so far, and why? 
Oh, I can’t choose—they’re all good in their own way, for different occasions. Out of the Singapore sausages, the most surprising flavour bomb was the Spicy Tongue bratwurst, especially with the condiments that UgliSabi served during the events. The flavours of the Native Herb Ball and the Ocean Maw Dog were wholesome, fresh and comfortingly delicious. The fruit salami stayed true to the ingredients and keeps the pure flavours of fruit and nuts.

Don’t miss: Nithiya Laila didn’t grow up in the kitchen, but has absolutely made it her business to showcase Asia’s food heritage

What’s your favourite way to prepare a sausage?
Any method works; the important thing is the condiment. Sausage tastes so much better with a sauce to dip in. Mustard, ketchup, hot sauce—it doesn’t matter, there just needs to be a condiment.

Besides Sausage of the Future, are there any projects you’d like to highlight?
My other passion is jellies and seaweed. I’m writing a book on the chemical constructions of jellies in food. In a few weeks, I’ll go to Japan for a ceramic residency where I hope to explore the beauty of edible seaweed in combination with tableware. Anything to fascinate people about food and food production!

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