To us all, abattoirs are horrible places, mysterious even. We know that animals go there to be slaughtered and eventually end up on our plates but do we know the process in between? Do we know how the animal was looked after before being slaughtered and even how it was slaughtered? Do we even want to know?
This design project was for my final year project at Oxford Brookes University which undertook a very dynamic route with the research being based in science and the arts; transposing these two disciplines into my architectural design. The project is titled ‘Artificial Abattoir’, where I was investigating the future of meat production and how lab-grown meat could become a realisation in factory production and in turn be an environmental benefit to meat production.
Within the realms of this project I explored how a new typology of meat production could transpose into a vital amenity within the future society of meat production and climate change. Now is the time to create a typology that will address ‘hybrid’ of current and future issues. The new structure was located on the existing Tate and Lyle Sugar Refinery in East London which will intertwine to existing production of sugar, with sugar being an integral ingredient to growing vitro meat.
This experience will no doubt create a stir and get the topic and vision into the mainstream which is what the aim is for the end result. It will get more people through the doors to experience the process and eat the meat produced.
This project will arouse the discourse of where our current meat comes from, because a large percentage of our food originates from factory farms. Animals on factory farms do not live a life. As well as the animals being mistreated, they have been know to catch certain diseases which are then filtered into our food chain. Be it the additional pesticides and antibiotics, or with cows on factory farms, standing in small pens where they are forced to stand and lay in their own faeces, traces of which can contaminate into the beef production process.
There is a certain quality to some abattoirs, architecturally and theatrically. We as society used to enjoy a trip to the local abattoir, it was seen as a thrill seeking experience; it is not the building that is necessarily horrible, but the activities inside that are deemed horrible. Elements of these historical events should be transposed into this new typology, reflecting on the past and experiencing the new.
The new process of meat production will question every meat lover and vegetarian around. Some people will change their minds because they do or do not like how this new victim-less meat is produced. Either way, it has to be said that we as society trust in science so much, be it predicting the future, curing deadly diseases and creating new technologies. Would we, however, trust science enough for it to change our meat production and how we eat completely?
