NZIA Graphisoft Award Winner 2010
FRASER MOORE - UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND
Fraser Moore from the University of Auckland has won the annual competition to find New Zealand's top architecture student.The proposal for a building that combines beef slaughtering and steak eating gave the judges in the 2010 New Zealand Institute of Architects Graphisoft Student Design Awards plenty to chew on.
In his competion entry Moore envisaged a slaugherhouse, meat preaparation area and restaurant, all under one roof in a building on the corner of Park and Carlton Gore Roads, a site which was until recently occupied by a petrol station and garage.
"I wanted to redraw the link between meat producer and meat consumer," Moore says. "In modern beef retail, especially in supermarkets, there's no mess and little blood. There's no connection between the shop and the abbatoir, and often huge travelling distances between two."
"I wanted to provide an alternative to the current sterilised environment. People in Western cities have little knowledge of the process which delivers an animal onto their plate. The building I designed would accommodate that process. Visitors wouldn't have to confront all the apects of meat production if they didn't want to, but they'd certainly come away with some understanding of how flesh becomes food."
Moore, an Auckland Grammar School old boy who says Lego and model making were two of his childhood interests, was one of a dozen entrants in the Student Design Awards which each year are contested by the four top final year students from each of New Zealand's three schools of architecture - at the University of Auckland, Unitec and Victoria University of Wellington.
For winning the competition, Moore receives $5,000 and a trip to Sydney. Two Highly Commended awards were also announced at the competition function in Wellington on 2 December. Rowan Baird from the University of Auckland and Joseph Shepherd from Victoria University both receive a trip to Sydney.
Joining Patrick Clifford on the judging panel were Richard Naish of Auckland architecture firm RTA Studio - the designer of the new Ironbank Building on K' Road - and Paul Minifie, a partner in the Melbourne practice Minifie van Schaik Architects and an associate professor at RMIT University.
Juror's Comments
A challenging and provocative proposition that engages the patron in an ethically volatile program, fusing meat production with consumption.Fraser's commitment to the development of a controversial idea into a clearly articulated proposal is unwavering. There is no attempt to ease our discomfort, or relieve us from confronting this reality.An architecture results that is articulate, legible and unnerving. It is so compelling one can almost smell it.
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