- Words and images by Alexandra Martin
Goal & objective
We love markets, their nostalgia and charm as a destination but they do not provide the majority of the food we consume and buy. Meat Futures objective is to sustain the authenticity of Ridley Road Market in an age of technological advancements in the nature of food consumption and while people are eating less meat.
Strategy
Responding to Dalston’s existing lively food culture, particularly the prevalent meat presence throughout Ridley Road Market, the project predicts that the future of meat, is no real meat.
Through embedding a meat innovation centre and testing interventions that mimic market interactions, it aims to promote more sustainable meat consumption through re-connecting people with the source of their food. The center museumises the industrial process of both cell cultured and plant based meat production for the public to see, bringing light to environmentally friendly production methods that provide produce for both local vendors and is exported to global suppliers.
Impact
The proposal offers an infrastructure that plugs into the existing market and ensures its workers and traders are able to have a: sustainable business & enhance the vibrancy of ‘their place.’ More widely, it looks at the progression of the meat industry, and how that manifests spatially, and how such an industrial process can be knitted within the city, becoming a piece of it.
Site location
Ridley Road Market, Borough of Hackney, London
Project size
44788 sqft / 4161 sqm (phase 01)
Client
Joint venture of:
Commercial – Sainsburys
State – Hackney Council
Community – Stall owners
