Salt Island

Salt Island is born of the desire to recover one of the most iconic and beautiful landscapes of the island of Formentera: the saltworks. The extraction of the salt and the industry linked to it have left an indelible mark on the island through centuries of work, but now the shadow of oblivion and the touristic pressure on the environment are looming over it.

The saltworks’ landscape is one of the few industrial scenarios made by man that can integrate so gracefully in their natural environment. The intervention simply pursues to reconstruct the paths that have been degraded over time, so that people can wander through them. The importance is not on the project, but on something more essential: the beauty of the square flats that mirror their surroundings and the bright white of the crystallized salt in a summer’s day. The project itself is in the sequence of the promenade, in the new paths that offer new perspectives, and not in the form.\nAt the end of this promenade lies the salt windmill, located at the top of a small hill that watches over the flat landscape and the sea. Currently converted in a tourist’s restaurant, the century’s old windmill and the house next to it cry in silence. In less than half a century, the buildings have been completely stripped of their original purpose, and it is time they regain it. The project aims to reconvert the windmill into a museum, making it a place where the history of the saltworks can be explained.\nThe intervention stablishes a dialogue with an architecture of the past, of stone and tradition, and with the place, salt, crystalline sea and white stone. The earthy tones speak of the Mediterranean light, and the volumetry forces the visitant to follow a path which turns, crosses and goes up and down between spaces connected to each other and to the landscape. The project searches for a poetic relationship with its surroundings; as such, even the roof structure mimics the saltworks square geometry.\nThe basement is excavated in the rock behind the existing 5 m north stone wall. It is built with a stereotomic language: weight, mass, gravity. The ground floor, on the other hands, is light and acrobatic, made with cantilever elements that fly through the air. The old windmill is completely restored, transforming the tower into a giant light well that bathes all the interior with light. As such, the windmill becomes a metaphor of the initial reason of why this project was started: to bring light to a heritage that was waiting in the darkness.