Salt Imaginaries

Designers in Residence, Design Museum, London 2020

Salt Imaginaries investigates minerals and extractive processes from the Atacama Desert in Chile. Presenting minerals as natural and cultural carriers of histories and local narratives, this ongoing research focuses on re-thinking the value of disregarded minerals and mining waste. With an architectural surface made of 1300 tiles of salt and plaster, the Salt Imaginaries installation proposes a new perception of salt; a vital and abundant mineral that has signified many different things since ancient times. There are more than 14.000 known uses for salt, and countless mystical attributes, and yet we often overlook its materiality. Experimenting with different kinds of saline residues —from discarded salts from lithium evaporation processes to salts left as residue on the roads that go from mines to the port— this project questions the value of a disregarded material like salt to re-think it as a precious and versatile mutating material with a geometric 3D surface design. Through a multi-sensory patterned wall with shifting lights, sound, films and sculptural elements, the installation exhibited at the Design Museum invites people to reimagine relationships between humans and natural environments, presenting new ways of thinking about material culture, where digital design, craftsmanship, waste and natural resources can coexist.

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© Francisco Ibanez

© Francisco Ibanez

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© Felix Speller

© Felix Speller

The three-metre curved wall acts as a performative device in the environment, interacting with humidity and light. On a short timescale, a kinetic light cycle brings the wall to life by casting shifting shadows, while on a longer term, the sculptural wall is physically changing: salt is reacting to the humidity and temperature of the room, subtly crystallising and evolving as a living system. The tiled wall is questioning how can we see our spaces and landscapes as stable yet mutating environments, and ultimately questioning salt, and all materials, as cultural constructs.

Interacting with light and sound, the curved wall creates a reverberating effect in the middle, inviting people to sit down and contemplate its surface. The installation is conceived as a meditative, almost ritualistic space, where visitors can be immersed by the light, sound and simplicity of the white salt wall, answering to the many spiritual properties that have been associated with salt throughout history.

Scenographic elements like the glowing sun bring to the space ideas about natural light cycles and the warm landscape of the desert, where the sun is the only reference of movement and orientation. The soundscape, created by artist Tom Burke, reinterprets the sound of cracking salt crust in the desert into a meditative immersive soundscape. Through a film, samples and 3D printed rocks, visitors can navigate salt from mineral to digital dimensions.

See research process in Re-thinking Mineral Life

Making at the studio

Photos by Pablo Izquierdo at the Design Museum studio-lab

Project credits

Fabrication - Peter Bennett
Tile casting assistant - Joseph Wood
Sound design - Tom Burke
Lighting - Beam Lighting Design
3D animation - George Stamenov
Video editing - Dimitris Armenakis
Curators - Sumitra Upham, Maria McLintock

This project was exhibited at the Design Museum as part of the Designers in Residence Cosmic Exhibition, supported by the Arts Council England. Find out more about the showcase on the Design Museum website and their Q&A

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