A Memoir in Salt
Project details
- Year
- 2022
- Programme
- spatial-design
- Practices
- Commercial
- Minor
- Data Design
Welcome to the lowest point on Earth.
Located between 3 territories long in conflict – Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, the Dead Sea has been a beauty admired since before our recorded history. Today, tourists happily float in its syrupy waters, without realizing that Ironically – the Dead Sea is dying. Fast. Too fast.
Three generations down the line, it will be gone, just like life on its shores as we know it. Humans have always had a complicated relationship with Nature, even more so – with each other. However, before painting the picture black and white, the honest question stands – how did it come to ‘Man versus Nature’ here? Does life in the desert come at an inevitable price? And more urgently – what’s left when the Sea and life on its crumbling shores are gone for good?
Conflicts, politics, and tourism illusions go on. Meanwhile, the lowest point on Earth is still dropping. 600 Olympic-size swimming pools worth of water every day – vanishing. But the memory can still stand solidified.
A Memoir in Salt is a 21st-century piece of architecture – the museum that captures stories in its very walls, not mere objects on display.
The project exists somewhere in the realm between journalism, architecture, and art. Walking through the sequence of spaces, the architecture reveals a timeline of two characters – the Sea and the Man. This leads the viewer through mankind’s complex relationship with the Dead Sea – the complete awe, the bliss, the ambition, and eventually – decay.
Every angle, every straight or overly complex path, and every piece of stone, they all recall the richness the Dead Sea has offered mankind. But also the end that mankind has brought to the Sea. Still – the journey ends on a moment frozen in time – a future where the Sea may live on in another medium altogether.
At the heart of the project: capturing the memory of the soon-to-be gone Dead Sea.