The Salton Sea, California was created in 1905 when irrigation channels burst their banks and the Colorado river flowed into the Imperial Valley for two years. After WW2, property speculators laid out a number of new developments around the lake’s shore, and promoted it as a ‘new Palm Springs with water’. However, water could only flow into the valley, so increasing salination and toxic agricultural run-off, erratic changes in water level and mass fish die-off have meant that the ambitious plans of the 1960s to develop the area into a recreational resort were abandoned. A few of the first developments remain occupied but most buildings are dilapidated and the majority of the plots were never developed.
Taking the slab of the unrealised Salton City Airport as my starting point, my project investigated the climatic limitations and opportunities of the site, and a number of local and international precedents for extreme desert living. My final proposal imagines the facades of a local derelict balloon-frame house reused as shuttering from which are cast the courtyard walls of a new, subterranean dwelling.
Project produced within Mark Campbell and Stuart Dodd’s Intermediate Unit at the Architectural Association, London, October 2011-June 2012.
Submitted to fulfil RIBA Part 1 qualification in June 2013.