RESEARCH

SALT

What is salt ?

Salt (NaCl), sodium chloride, mineral substance of great importance to human and animal health, as well as to industry. The mineral form halite, or rock salt, is sometimes called common salt to distinguish it from a class of chemical compounds called salts.

Where?

Salt is harvested directly either from seawater or natural brine, or from rock salt deposits.
There are three types of salt extraction: solar evaporation, rock salt mining and solution mining.

Uses

CHEMICAL

Pulp and paper industry: for pulping and neutralization, washing and bleaching and processing of waste paper
• Textiles: leather tanning, finishing of wool and cotton, dyeing and bleaching
• Petroleum additives
• Dyes

It is one of the most effective and most widely used of all food preservatives.

FOOD

HEALING

ARCHITECTURE

The Siwa Oasis:
The architecture is characterized by the use of salt blocks, taken from the nearby salty lakes.

DESIGN

Therapy rooms made out of Himalayan Salt

“The Salt Project is a biomimetic attempt to create architecture using seawater in the desert. By using locally available resources we can grow plants and create architecture without producing waste. The idea is to pump up seawater in arid areas around the world, split it in salt and fresh water, use the fresh water for produce and use the salt for architecture.”

The Saltygloo is made of a combination of salt harvested from the San Francisco Bay and glue, a “salty glue”, which makes an ideal 3D printing material, one that is strong, waterproof, lightweight, translucent and inexpensive.

GEOtube Tower

Born from unique environmental conditions, the GEOtube Tower is a new kind of urban sculptural icon. Gravity-sprayed with adjacent Persian Gulf waters, its building skin is entirely grown rather than constructed; is in continual formation rather than fully completed; and is created locally rather than imported.

CULTURE

RITUALS

Natron's salt properties worked to preserve the mummy in three ways:
Dried the moisture in the flesh thereby inhibiting the growth of bacteria
Degreased the body fats by removing moisture-filled fat cells
Served as a microbial disinfectant.

Salt has played a vital part in religious ritual in many cultures, symbolizing purity. There are more than 30 references to salt in the Bible, including the well-known expression "salt of the earth." Additionally, there are many other literary and religious references to salt, including use of salt on altars representing purity, and use of "holy salt" by the Unification Church.

In Buddhist tradition, salt repels evil spirits, which is why it is customary to throw salt over your shoulder before entering your house after a funeral: it scares off any evil spirits that may be clinging to your back.

Salt has long held an important place in religion and culture. Greek worshippers consecrated salt in their rituals. Jewish Temple offerings included salt; on the Sabbath, people of the Jewish faith still dip their bread in salt as a remembrance of those sacrifices.

Shinto religion also uses salt to purify an area. Before sumo wrestlers enter the ring for a match—which is actually an elaborate Shinto rite—a handful of salt is thrown into the center to drive off malevolent spirits.

CONCEPT & IDEA

KITCHEN SALT

I was most interested in the architecture
Building with salt
SALTY GLOO PROJECT, what i liked about this projects was that they used resources that were around them.
I was intrigued what else could i create with salt.

The salt i had around me was the kitchen salt and after the experiments i did ,i really liked how one ended up, a translucent material.

EXPERIMENTS

Kitchen Salt

Is a an alternative version of regular plates , using salt , water and cornstarch as the main materials.
With the purpose of showing how resources around us can have a bigger impact and how even the kitchen salt can be a viable material to create something new.

Future

If i had 10 weeks i would like to make a real prototype of the pieces and experiment more with kitchen salt .

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