Salt Infrastructures & Geographies: New Conditions for the Salinated Landscape | Great Lakes Region, USA (in-progress)

Rhode Island School of Design | Master of Architecture Thesis

Advisors: Amelyn Ng, Shou Jie Eng, Carl Lostritto

This thesis interrogates the relationship between resource extraction, urban infrastructures, and division of territories. Salt, extracted from the earth, becomes the primary driver of this investigation. By examining salt’s role as a component of geologic makeup, target of corporate-industrial extraction, and agent of municipal infrastructure, a greater understanding of how these intertwining relationships have lent to specific spatial conditions is developed. The Great Lakes region, with its geohistorical ties to salt, becomes a stage for this examination. Salt spans geological strata and transnational borders. The salt mine, in its relation to the urban context, offers a conversation about surface and subsurface property rights. The salt shed, both a fixture of municipal infrastructure and a marker of territory, becomes an architectural typology of interest.