Halokinesis Machine

Studio Theodore Spyropoulos

Tutors Apostolos Despotidis, Octavian Mihai Gheorghiu, Hanjun Kim

Team Kay Mashiach, Maya Mashiach, Zhen Jia, Zhicheng Yang, Stephanie Di Gironimo

Salt, an essential and abundant element on earth, is known for its ubiquitous flavoring and preservation, while also denoted as a sterilizing agent. However, salt remains an essential element of life. Salinity’s increasing abundance in relation to its paradoxical attributes of sustaining and annihilating situates itself as a priority in investigating its usefulness and applications.  

HALOKINESIS MACHINE is an architectural endeavor that utilizes this universal material to enable space and re-balance the environment within applicable locations on this planet. HALOKINESIS is the magical ability to move salt with one’s mind, and thus, this project explores salt crystallization’s phenomenology by harnessing this power within our reality. 

 In this case, the elemental is focused on salt, a commodity around the world, by appropriating the origins of salt production processes, both natural and artificial. Analysis of this element revealed an inherent nature of supertemporal growth, requiring us to elicit interventions through controlling behavioral propagation. We take into consideration the circulation and movement of salt bodies yielding a natural source of crystallization. As a tide washes in, saline water is introduced in situ and naturally redistributed back into the ocean. Our HALOKINESIS relies on time coupled with a responsive scaffold, growing crystals to achieve strength and formations.  

 Formations of scaffolds are determined by inputting localized terrains, salinity levels, and taxonomies of potential space. Self-binding phenomena occurring in salt crystallization is implemented in the organizational profile and scaffolding systems employed in the granular aggregation, composed of spicules interlocking.  

 When ideal formations are set by an organizational agent, the environmental processes occur and crystallization binds and freezes the scaffold in time. The outcome of salt crystallization’s self-binding nature equips massings comprised of inexact aggregations to be stabilized with minimal energy consumption. Metamorphosis of chaotic granules into potential spatial boundaries within a temporal environment is fabricated by the congenital laws of crystallizing and dissolving, generating a process that is reversible and a space that is re-shapeable. The proposal thus supplies a dynamic dialogue and constant variability in response to the environment.