Exposing the Production-Consumption Gap
Thousands of miles away in a remote, barren landscape, a young steer feeds on grain rations with 1,000 pen-mates – EATING TO BE EATEN. Meanwhile, an obese man devours a greasy burger for $1 at a fast food joint in a commercial strip – EATING TO EAT.
The chains of commodification in an industrial, conventional food system are spatially and temporally complex. Consumers are immersed in a global economy of abundant, convenient, and cheap food; however, in reality those products emerge out of locally based systems at the peripheries of geographical and cultural perception. The Meat You Haven’t Met critically addresses how the inconsistent agency of architectural design in the conventional food system provokes the fragmentation of production and consumption spaces through the focused lens of industrial beef production.
Many meat consumers are unconscious of an intruding architecture and infrastructure that destroys natural landscapes, symbiotic relationships, and local communities in order to support such a sizeable industry. Industrial beef producers refuse to acknowledge the serious immediate and long-term ramifications of their desires to control fickle nature through synthetic, manufactured means for economic gain. Furthermore, they employ deceptive imagery in marketing schemes to capitalize on lack of public knowledge. Yet, as contradictions about industrial beef are publicized, consumers demand a more transparent food system. Where can architecture designed for consumption intersect with earlier phases of production and processing to link these seemingly disparate yet completely interdependent experiences?
This thesis contends that architecture can be a tool for exposing the social, environmental, economic, and political problems caused by industrial beef production and excessive cultural consumption of beef to promote meaningful change. A narrative is established in which a fictitious beef corporation seeks the expertise of an architect to design a Transparency Tour as part of a green-washing campaign. However, while the intent of the corporation is to mislead consumers to gain loyalty, the architect seizes the opportunity to infiltrate the system and expose realities that would have remained hidden. Subversive design interventions within three stops along the tour deliberately juxtapose production and consumption experiences: the cow/calf operation and steakhouse, the feedlot and fast-food restaurant, and the packing plant and grocery store. The challenge is to deceive the deceiver with unavoidable moments along a pre-determined sequence that explicitly force tour people to confront the realities of a complicated, messy network that aren’t so easy to digest.