Queensboro Culture - Proposal

Technology and industry transformed the USA during the Second Industrial Revolution. Nowhere was this more evident than New York City, which was transformed from a sparsely populated former Dutch trading outpost to a big player in global trade and industry within the space of 50 years. Central to New York City’s growth and cultural heritage was the meat industry. Enabled by a series of large infrastructure projects, New York City’s meat industry became one of the largest in the world, however, since the 1930’s, increasing land prices have progressively forced both the meat industry and the network of supporting delicatessens and butchers to close or relocate.

Current predictions estimate a growth in global population to reach 9.7billion by 2050. This increase, combined with economic growth in Less Economically Developed Countries, is expected to result in an almost 70% increase in caloric requirement globally, largely from increased meat consumption. This increase far outstrips the capacity of present agricultural methods and would use more than the total availability of drinkable water and over 60% of the Earth’s landmass.

The so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ offers some potential solutions to sustainably satisfying this demand, through biotechnology. Cellular Agriculture is one-such technology, enabling meat and other animal products to be lab-grow, using a fraction of the space and resources.

Integrating these new technologies, this scheme looks to introduce a cellular agriculture bio-meat facility to Manhattan, aiming to re-connect meat-production to the city and making a statement to one of the world’s most meat-consuming nations about sustainable production.

The 'Meatropolis'

The USA has one of the largest meat consumption rates per capita in the world; more than double the golbal average, twenty times India’s and almost twice China’s. The image above shows the annual meat consumption of Manhattan Island’s 1.6 million innhabitants, arranged to form the Empire State Building.

Returning to Manhattan’s legacy infrastructure, the project is located below Queensboro Bridge, intensifying under used space and offering a foot bridge to Roosevelt Island. The ground-bearing portion of the scheme houses an intensive, large-scale, cellular meat facility, offering affordable meat products. The mid span is occupied by a number of ‘bio-alotments’, allowing New York City residents and small businesses to experiment with their own meat production. Central to this span is an open public space, allowing views up and down the East River and celebrating the location. Finally, on arriving at Roosevelt Island, there is a new Deli, where experimental meat production can be tested.

In the pioneering spirit of Manhattan’s infrastructure, the long-span structural system is ‘biomimetically’ informed, developing a typical ‘box girder’ to a central ‘spine’ system, which is highly differentiated in response to load conditions and programmatic requirements.