Frank Gehry tower features salt as building material

In France, designers at Atelier Luma are using salt crystals to produce interior cladding for the eagerly anticipated Arles tower. Over 4,000 glass-like panels—comprised of salt crystals grown on metal mesh using only sunlight and wind—have been installed in the Frank Gehry skyscraper.

Henna Burney and Kalijn Sibbel of Atelier Luma, who created the panels, told dezeen they believe interest in salt as a future building material will increase. “The wall of salt is a way to prove that it is possible to design with salt and it is possible to take it from its usual applications,” Burney says. “It is also a way to prove that materials can also be grown and that maybe not every aspect of its production needs to be fully controlled.”

The panels are part of a wider Atelier Luma project to demonstrate the benefits of using local materials in the Camargue region of France.

“The salt marshes called Les Salins du Midi situated in the city of Salins de Giraud have been producing salt since the 20th century,” Burney says. “During the fifties, the economy of the region was based on the production of derived salt products as soda and sodium carbonate. Nowadays the use of salt is notoriously reduced, making salt an abundant material to be explored.”

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