The Wieliczka Salt Mine, Portland Bogumil Kruzel
Tiny salt particles can permeate the building by the weathering effect and the process of crystallization. It can also be used as a building material to achieve architectural wonders and have been passed on for hundreds of of years in a number of regional cultures. For example, In the 12th century, Shali Castle was made by salt bricks, where was established in the Siwa oasis of Egypt, next to a Salt Lake; In the 13th century, with the exploitation of the Polish Wieliczka, the four carefully excavated underground churches, the statues of salt carvings and chandeliers carrying the spiritual sustenance of the salt workers. People still like sitting here for praying and reflecting now.
Human instinct for salt is unable to be changed by time, ancients created architectural strategies under the limitation from natural environment. At nowadays, people are also continue to study and explore and practice.
The architectural project "GEOtubeTower" by Architect named Thom Faulders. The project mainly used the salt mine growth system to build the a landmark tower for Dubai .(Dubai has the most salty seawater.)
GEOtube Tower, Faulders Studio
The world’s highest salinity for oceanic water is found in the adjacent Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf) as well as the Red Sea. This highly concentrated salt water is supplied to GEOtube Tower via a new 4.62 km buried pipeline and misted onto the tower’s exposed mesh. As the water evaporates and salt deposits aggregate over time, the tower’s appearance transforms from a transparent skin to a highly visible white solid plane. The result is a specialized habitat for wildlife that thrives is this environment, and an accessible surface for the harvesting of crystal salt. The Faulders team explores the potential of natural crystallization and 3D printing processes in experiments. On the Faulders Studio pages show a material experiment named Crystalline Growth. To investigate novel methods for growing building surfaces directly into place, this scaled-down ‘test’ for a portion of our GEOtube Tower proposal explores real-time material accretion. Taking approximately 60 days to form, the crystalline salt tracks the prescribed overall smooth geometry with a uniform coating. Up close, the crystalline materiality is embedded with out of control surface irregularities and edge deformations: details that are grown into place through the evaporative processes.
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They collaborated with Emerging Objects/UC Berkeley (www.emergingobjects.com) to produce a scale model of the GEOtube Tower by Faulders Studio. Emerging Objects provided material development and production to fabricate the building skin replication entirely from 3d printed salt. Constructed through a series of interlocking printed components, the model is extremely translucent and is consistent with the proposed full-scale material properties
There is another Studio named Emerging Objects based in California, USA. This is an independent and innovative 3D print design studio which combining 3D printing technology with salt. They collected raw materials from salt lake, and produced a large-scale, lightweight, additive manufactured structures material. The Saltygloo is an experiment in 3-D printing using locally harvested salt from the San Francisco Bay.
Emerging Objects originally created an installation by Saltygloo, which inspired by the Inuit pavilion. It consists of 336 unique translucent plates, which are made by a powder 3D printing process (a layer of salt is laid, and then the salt is selectively fixed in place with a sticky agent, and the final structure is printed sequentially.
Salt is not only a renewable resource, it is also cheaper and lighter compared to commercial printing materials. Using salt to 3D printing buildings is inspired by ancient 's salt building techniques. "No one has ever used salt to print buildings in 3D," Emerging Objects said. "However, there has been a long history of salt brick buildings, especially in the Middle East and desert environments.
In previous experiments, I combined salt with wires. Although the salt was reacting with the wire and achieving crystal growth in a short time, but I cannot control the direction and shape of its growth. I was inspired by the material experiment form Folders Studio. Perhaps I can use printing material or weaving wires as the basement to achieve crystal growth effects.
Photo courtesy of Faulders Studio and Emerging Objects.
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