Kitchen Budapest (KiBu) is an innovation lab based in Budapest, Hungary. It was founded in 2007 by a collective of media artists, theoreticians and coders from miscellaneous backgrounds with sponsorship from Magyar Telekom. Founder team includes Adam Somlai-Fischer, Peter Halacsy, Robin Nagy, Attila Nemes, and Eszter Bircsák. As one of the first media labs in Hungary, KiBu found its primary mission to instigate digital literacy and DIY techniques on the local scene. Ever since, KiBu has been actively present as an internationally recognized innovation lab with young researchers and developers forming its team.
KiBu incorporates three functions including research and development (prototyping, testing, service design, UX/UI design), education (next generation programs as Talent and Lift) and industry collaboration.
KiBu has taken up a strong intermediary role between several agencies, scenes and individuals. It connects corporate demands with creative supplies, theoretic bias of academic education with tools of the maker culture, talented young people with professional support, global innovation with situated, everyday use. KiBu has long been working within an international network of media labs and bears established contacts with the local universities integrating technical knowledge with creative skills.
KiBu is a place where ideas come alive. Material instantiations of great ideas are the first steps in the making: via 24 hour hackathons, pressure cooking sessions they try and test methodologies, concepts, objects, services. KiBu has a well-equipped workshop area to enable wide-ranging projects to be manufactured, programmed or constructed from 3D printers to strong server parks to run high fidelity renders. The prototypes are publicized at Demo Day, the biannual showcase event.