Landing Salt: Industry and the Structure of Places 

Salt evaporation ponds, Ile de Re, France

by Dan Adams (MArch ’05)

Landing Salt is a study of the ways that global industry becomes locally situated in urban environments around the world. This project looks at the salt industry in different cultural and geographic context in order to decipher consistencies and variability that occurs in both the industry and the local context in response to industrial landing.

Industries, whether dependent on the ocean for distribution or completely terrestrial, land in specific places and in specific communities, and their presence becomes concrete. The abstract forces and flows of these industries and their activities become manifested in the infrastructure of the cities and towns in which they are located.  Is it possible that the often resulting stage of conflict between industry and community is actually a zone of great positive potential for a place?  While often ‘bad’ characteristics (pollution, traffic jams, perceptions of low worth and value) result, can the calculated and designed ‘theatre of engagement’ between industries and communities foster new, unique, or even ‘good’ characteristics in a city?

Since undertaking the Druker Fellowship, I’ve continued to reference and build upon this work over the last ten years. As I’m writing this sentence now I’ve just returned from visiting the Salar de Huasco and will visit salt mines in the Atacama Desert tomorrow. The work continues…

Learn more at Landing Studio.