Across New York City lay mountains of road salt, transplanted to its shores from mines as distant as Tarapacá, Chile. These migrant minerals are stored in industrial sheds across the five boroughs in anticipation of inclement weather. Before the road salt is scattered atop the city to disappear snow and ice, the salt mountains are themselves disappeared under the watch of a maintenance infrastructure that keeps them inaccessible to the public. Road salt, in fact, is most topical where it is absent: in the piles of snow and on the patches of ice that accumulate.

An Invitation to Walk Within Walls,  traces road salt’s odyssey in three appearances: the borrow pit from which it is first extracted; the sheds in which it is stored; and the grid onto which it is scattered. The narrative unfolds with the reappearance of a salt shed on the Gansevoort Peninsula near the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, notably situated on the site of a previous demolished salt shed. Here, where disappearance takes multiple forms, the design project ensures the resurfacing of the salt on the building’s skin and invites the public within its walls to witness the mineral’s enduring presence.

Harvard GSD
Advisors: Lisa Haber-Thomson, Helen Han 

a salt shed