BETHAN MULLARD
THE ISLE OF SALT - A PLACE BETWEEN THE LAND AND THE SEA // THE ISLE OF BUTE
The West of Coast of Scotland is covered with the traces of spatial rituals of salt gone by. Salt has been one of the most significant foodstuffs throughout human history, however these millennial old rituals have been lost in modern day. 17% of people in Scotland have faced food poverty or insecurity in the last year, once where people’s days were measured by food rituals, now food poverty and insecurity has led to the cessation of these quotidian rituals. Therefore, this thesis seeks to propose a spatial intervention that explores how the spatial rituals around salt production can help those facing food trauma. A Place Between the Land and the Sea, is a ritual gesture that lies in the intermediary space between the source and consumption of salt.
The project is situated in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute. The Isle has a blighted history with salt production and this project therefore fulfils a 300 year old quest to make salt on Bute. The site features an abandoned 1930’s art deco bathing platform on the coast. In the project a new jetty has been added. The jetty acts as an axis for the rituals around salt to take place and lies in the intertidal zone, an extreme ecosystem between the land and the sea.
Scotland’s historical salt production was highly pollutive instead this project proposes the use of a graduation tower, a passive design, to produce salt. Graduation towers come from central Europe and use a tower of blackthorn and the elements of the sea, the wind and the sun to produce salt. Blackthorn and salt are within the project as new building materials continuing the rituals of spatial production.
