Architects Independent

Monday, October 2, 2017

The Salt Tower...

The Salt Tower
3D printed plaster, clay, salt, paint; base made of CNC milled marble.

It's estimated that 99% of potable water in Qatar is desalinated sea water, a process that requires 5 litres of oil per each cubic meter of treated water. Most desalination plants are located along the country's west coast, resulting in the adjacent sea being approximately 30% more saline than the country's east coast.

The design of the Salt Tower was catalyzed by the aforementioned. Placed by Qatar's west coast, the design is surrounded by a salt farm, which provides the raw material - the bricks - that make up the bulk of the Salt Tower's walls. Here, however, the tectonic support is, in a sense, 'reversed', and is actually provided by the gridded 'mortar' that surrounds the hollows that support the salt bricks. Maintaining this wall of salt would require constant upkeep. The salt farm provides the material, human labour would be needed to both fabricate the bricks and to patch the cavities resulting from seasonal rains and general erosion. The tower would act as a constant quantified reminder of the energy and effort required to provide us with one of our most basic needs.

Sketch of the Salt Tower...

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

The Weathered Tower...

The Weathered Tower

Made of 3D printed white ABS; green, blue and black paint; base of CNC milled travertine and mastic.

It's been estimated that the average age of a building in the Gulf region is 5 years, and the average lifespan of a building is 20 years.

The design acknowledges the need for select nodes of seeming permanence in a perpetually changing world. The tower, which stands on an unspecified rock in an undetermined desert within the GCC, would act as a 'filter' of the subtly abrasive but unrelenting dust and sand present at the setting, which would permeate and transcend through its ribbed torso, a slow and extended performance that would gradually begin to weather and wear off the tower's various stratum of paint, layer by layer, revealing the green below the black, blue below the green, and the white core below the blue. This process would take years, decades, to complete. The layers would reveal themselves unevenly, dependent on the whims of the prevalent winds and its changing environs. In time the tower would reflect - celebrate - its age, and in its ever morphing/ amended presence, become a connective link between generations...