Bath House at the Baltinache Salt Lagoon

Atacama Desert, Chile

The indigenous communities of the Atacama have developed an intimate relationship with the desert landscape. Their occupation of the landscape is rooted in the belief that it is sacred, giving meaning to the various cosmological and geological characteristics of the desert. In the present day, mining in the region has strained an already limited supply of natural resources. Lithium mining in particular, has rapidly grown within recent years, powering the global tech industry. Mining a ton of lithium requires roughly 500,000 gallons of water. Lithium mines are consuming about 2 million gallons of water per day. (Water used to extract and concentrate brine, which typically contains only traces of lithium.) The scaring of the landscape through mining and extraction, at its current scale, is perceived by many of the indigenous community as both dangerous and harmful. The project exists as a restraining architectural device, taking on the form of a bathhouse. It responds critically to the massive consumption of water as a result of present day lithium mining, appropriating an existing tourist destination, the Baltinache lagoon. 

The project takes advantage of the exiting landscape, appropriating the abundant supply of rock salt and using it as a building material. The use of this unique and local building material allows the project to be as non-invasive as possible, while also allowing for variety in the spatial and tectonic articulation of the project.