With Salt it Hurts, With Salt it Heals is a two-part spatial research and design project.
With Salt It Hurts is a research that reveals the hidden stories of Argentinian Puna, part of the Lithium Triangle and how this industry directly impacts on human and non human life. It examines salt, the abundant yet overlooked byproduct of lithium extraction, as both material and metaphor. Through this lens, it questions the environmental paradoxes embedded within the so-called "green energy" transition.
With Salt It Heals is a material and spatial exploration that proposes alternatives to the dilemmas of lithium mining, salt excess, water scarcity, and extractivist alienation. Engaging with salt’s dual nature, as both corrosive and preserver, it imagines new ecologies of cohabitation between industry, landscape, and local communities.
With Salt It Heals envisions a landscape intervention on top the lithium evaporation pools: 84 textile towers emerge from the brine, capturing evaporated water while crystallizing salt into form. They stand as water temples for memory and reflection, sheltered beneath locally woven textiles that solidify over time with salt. Blending weaving traditions with natural processes in a mining site.
A 20-kilometer network of elevated walkways invites visitors to traverse this post-extractive terrain, punctuated by hydration stops that offer fresh shade and water under the harsh desert sun. Each water station is corresponding in its layout to the 84 subterranean extraction wells that lie underground silently piercing Salar del Rincón.
1,533,000 liters of water and 13,977 kilograms of salt are reclaimed annually from waste, transforming industrial residue into a space of contemplation. The project proposes a choreography of industry, culture, ecology, and memory coexisting, entangled, questioning how we might reimagine extractivist landscapes in an age of energy transition.
