In collaboration with Maison Tangible I took part in a residency at the World Heritage site The Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans (The Saline Royale) which was designed by Claude Nicolas Ledoux and is in the Franche Comté region in France. I was tasked with creating 5 pieces related to my experience of the place


Ledoux
I love to play with geometry in my work, and in Ledoux I found a kindred spirit in this regard. I loved all of his many designed buildings, using these elaborate shapes and ideas for the most mundane of everyday structures. And something that is great about his work is the symmetry and angles and everything from different perspectives. So I thought it would be fun to do a little tribute to his works, and combine a few difference perspectives of the buildings into one image, so that you see buildings from both front on and from above.


Awe
One of the first things that struck me about the Saline was the scale and how imposing the structures were. There's a real sense of grandeur and history and it's quite powerful to stand and just look up at the architecture. From my studio space, I could see out the window at the other visitors, and saw this one old guy standing looking at the Maison du Directeur for a good few minutes. Just looking. Not moving. I thought that was really cool, and summed up my own experience.


Bird's Eye View
I saw a bird of prey one day, hovering over the saline, just staying in one place. I'm sure it was actually just pinpointing a mouse or something, but I liked to think that it was merely admiring Ledoux's arc design from where it is most obvious. I later replaced the bird of prey for a swallow (a bird more synonymous with the area)


The Brine & the Forest
I was amazed to find out the reason for the Arc et Senans and it's location. The original location of the Royal Saltworks was by the coast, because that's where the saltwater is that they need. But they also needed wood in order to burn in the process of producing the salt. And they had depleted the forests around the original saltworks. And so they decided that it was easier to transport saltwater (brine) to the forest, rather than the forest to the saltwater. So they built a massive pipe from the coast to the middle of the Choux Forest. I also tried to explore the areas surrounding the Saline, and in doing so discovered an amazing variety of trees about, so I reference many of these in the image.


Urn
On a lot of the walls of the Saline are these Urn motifs. They are supposed to reference the pouring of brine out of the pipe and are very representative of the function of the place, but are also unnecessary decorative items that just make the place more beautiful. It's a weird combination of form instead of function but depicting the function. There are also several arc shaped windows in the buildings which is where the smoke from the salt-producing part of the process. I thought that these correlated nicely, so combined the two, showing the beauty on the outside, but hinting at the difficult and uncomfortable work conditions on the inside with the smoke coming out of the hole. I also liked the idea that if you line these postcards next to each other in a line, you start to construct your own Saline wall.