Scholarship recipient Napier's Hamish Beattie with the model he created to symbolise improvement in life quality for people who lived in parts of the world where home and income meant having to live in landfills.
Napier architecture student Hamish Beattie is one of seven young New Zealanders to pick up a $10,000 postgraduate scholarship which were announced in Wellington this week as part of a $184,000 presentation from the Freemasons University Scholarships programme.
Twenty-six of the country's top students benefited, with seven awarded $10,000 and
19 awarded $6000 scholarship packages.
Mr Beattie is working toward a PhD in architecture at Victoria University in Wellington and as past of his thesis had drawn on his interest in how what he called "socially motivated design" could draw attention to certain pressing global issues - the one he had been drawn toward involved improving the quality of life for people who were effectively forced to live in waste picking communities which sprung up and inhabited landfill areas.
"Many marginalised people around the world turn to landfills and scavenging as a source of livelihood."
He said while such communities were often well organised it was not always the case in regions of high migration, cultural fluidity and large numbers of vulnerable children, widows and the disabled.
