Beta Laydown

Beta Laydown is a site work that intervenes in a system designed to redistribute potash salts from evaporator ponds to the Bonneville Salt Flats Raceway north of Interstate 80 in Utah. The proposal linked parametric modeling with satellite-controlled excavation and grading equipment. Parameters in the script varied the shape and depth of excavations in the salt flats.

The salt flats landscape is made of basic elements and processes: gypsum soils, minerals, water, wind, sun. These elements interact with one another at varying scales of time and visibility. Though the salt flats are a very arid place, the territory has been engineered with channels and dikes to accommodate periodic flooding, potash production, and transportation infrastructure. Subtle elevation changes created large-scale effects. Artifacts adjacent to brine outflows were covered in crystals; armatures influencing how processes were revealed.

The Bureau of Land Management engineered the Laydown Project to re-distribute mineral-rich brine onto the salt flats. They created basins to re-suspend brine, a pump system, and a manifold to spread the brine northward to the raceway. This essential hydrological and geological remediation apparatus was nearly invisible in the great scale of the salt flats landscape.