“The West is the true magnetic pole. Ever since his expulsive from the Garden to a place east of Eden, Man has yearned westward as towards a state of remembered innocence, and human history is one long westward migration."
The project consists of ten proposed structures that express and realise the desire/dream to travel into the Salton Sea. The site is read as a destination point in man's eternal westward journey towards the promised land - many have headed towards the desert as pilgrims, undertaking a journey to arrive at the threshold of society, development and consciousness itself. One such episode is the miraculous birth of the Salton Sea amidst the frenzy of laying the first railroad tracks across the deserts of the American West - an engineering mishap in the early 20th century led to the Colorado River being diverted into an ancient lake bed. However this sacred journey is always punctuated by the daily transition from wakefulness towards sleep/dream, and the need for a dwelling space to enact banal rituals of bathing and sleeping. Hence in the journey towards the longed-for destination, one does not travel across and engage with the landscape, instead one moves through a series of interior spaces of architectural containers. At the Salton Sea, earlier suburbs and settlements as the embodiment of the American dream of dwelling within the desert have fallen into decay. Viewing the degeneration of domestic structures as one travels towards the Sea, the shoreline is read as a threshold between domesticity and nature. As the Sea dries up over the next 50 years, it will reduce in half its depth and the receding shoreline will reveal a new territory and extend this threshold condition. In order to continue the unfinished journey towards the Salton Sea, ten floating causeways take off from found roads around the Sea that extend across the shore, terminating in a dwelling space. Thus the journey towards the Salton Sea continues to an absurd conclusion, and to enter into a private space to sleep and dream, one must also fulfil the eternal dream to arrive at the promised destination.
